The city where I live has a Facebook group for the community and it has almost 38,0000 members in a county that has about 90,000 people. 

The page is used to post and comment about things going on in our city, ask for recommendations, talk about traffic, post lost dogs, post sightings of the roaming bear and many other things.

Lately, it’s been used for two things regarding our locally owned businesses – to complain about their slow service and hourly wages – and for people to ask for businesses who have owners that are of a certain race, gender or sexual orientation.

To address the first issue, I live in a tourist town and there is definitely a lack of workers, especially at restaurants, hotels and in other service industries. People need to be patient with the businesses and have some empathy for what they’ve been going through the past year.

So what if your cheeseburger takes ten more minutes than it used to? So what if you have to wait in line longer than you did back in 2020? Live with it, deal with it, expect it and be kind.

I’m guessing that many of the people posting on Facebook about slow service at local businesses weren’t working last March. I remember a more than a month where our town was a ghost town because our tyrannical Democrat Governor Whitmer closed everything down. I’d go to work at 6 a.m. in the morning and instead of seeing 40 cars on my ten minute drive, I’d be lucky to see four.

This wasn’t any kind of future that I wanted. It was eerie and I was worried about what would happen to our small town. 

I didn’t just go to work just to pay my bills. I did it to help my boss keep his company in business and to help the customers who still needed us. I live in a COMMUNITY and I felt obligated to do my part to keep it going.

Now that things are coming back to life in relatively full force, business is booming for some businesses like ours both because it’s a very busy time of the year and because our customers are trying to move on in business themselves and need our help.

I have also seen many complaints about how these horrible businesses aren’t offering a “living wage.” That is pretty much a joke to me when the going rate in our town is $15-$20/hr. plus health insurance. And many places offer a signing bonus. 

I remember a time during the Obama years that my husband couldn’t find anything better than a part-time job at $10/hr. And NO benefits. And somehow these snowflakes can’t live on $15 an hour? Give me a break.

The other irritating thing I have seen posted in the past week or so are people who are looking for black-owned, gay-owned and women-owned businesses to support. 

When you do this, YOU ARE A BIGOT. Plain and simple. There is no reason to pick a business based on any of these things. You pick a business because they have the product or service you need at the right price and they treat you well.

If we’re going to get into discrimination, why not pick businesses where the owner (and workers) are the “right” religion, the right political party, cheer for the same sports teams that we like, are dog or cat people like we are, etc. etc. etc. Let’s bring a checklist with us every time we go out to a local business.

And if these bigots truly want to discriminate and pick the businesses they go to based on their leftist criteria, why don’t they already know where the gay-owned, black-owned and women-owned businesses are? 

Why haven’t they been patronizing them all along? Why, all of a sudden, are they looking for a gay-owned business just because it’s Pride Month? Are they only planning to support them in June?

We are a COMMUNITY and should act like it.

We succeed (or fail) together.

ONE nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.