Shady Dealings In New Mexico Restaurants

by Corrine Rios in Facebook (via Michelle Schupp)

(Let me preface this with some information. This is about a restaurant in New Mexico. Our governor shut down restaurants in door seating in late March or early April. Many did curb side and pick up. They could NOT use their patios. Many restaurants had to close at this time. Around mid June, our governor opened up restaurants to only 50% capacity for indoor seating. Around July 13, our governor CLOSED indoor seating at restaurants again. She allowed them to do outdoor patio service. We live in the desert. Temps that week were in the high 90s! Who wants to eat outside. Many restaurants don't even have patios for outdoor seating.

This is where our restaurants are right now...struggling to remain open under threat of being closed again from our governor. )

We went to Bosque North in Bernalillo today for Marcus Birthday Lunch.

They have a patio. We had to walk through the inside to get to the patio. We have NEVER had to do this before, we have been there many times.

We didn't bring masks because who would've thought the protocols would change?

The company gave us 9 masks for us to use to walk about 30 feet inside the building to the patio were we could immediately take them off, which we did. They said these are the new rules of the governor.

What an expense for this company. And before you start getting judgmental, you know where I stand on the masks. We were expecting to get out of our cars and go straight to the patio as we had a reservation. Masks not necessary in 90 degree temps.

We ate. Food was good.

Then we get the bill.

The waitress told us that the wait staff is NO longer allowed to get tips. What use to be the line for the tip is now a "donation" section.

😲😲😲😲😲

The waitress proceeds to tell us that the company is NO longer allowing them to get tips and instead will start a "college fund for people of color." As she is telling us, this young gal is on verge of crying.

We didn't question anymore.

BUT we were in shock!

We came here to support this local business and their wait staff. I am so angry at this point, my husband and I decide to talk with the manager before we leave.

In short, the manager tells us, that the owners decided, that the less the wait staff makes the less the company will have to pay for unemployment benefits IF the governor shuts them down again. The wait staff does get minimum wage. The manager, who was waiting tables, says that doesn't equal their usual reduced hourly rate plus tips. So they are losing.

Many restaurants are doing this.

And they may not even tell you! Check the "tip" line on your receipt. If it says "donation" the wait staff isn't getting any of it! 😥

This is only one consequence of our governor's tyrannical unconstitutional closing down of indoor seating in our state.

These poor businesses and their employees.

I want to supoort restaurants but with their actions against the very people who work for them, leads me NOT WANTING TO SPEND MY MONEY AT THEIR ESTABLISHMENTS!

But what do we expect them to do?

Without doing this, they may not open again!

And here we are.....

A nation divided.

You may not see it as you maybe still blinded by a virus that has 99.9% recovery rate and deaths DECREASING.

"A house divided against itself, cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South." Abraham Lincoln June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's US senator.

We will accept this tyrannical behavior or we will VOTE it out in November.

I am losing hope in the people of New Mexico.