Eatery message leaves bad taste
First, the apology, and it’s an effusive one, an earnest one in my opinion, and one that Gecko’s restaurateur Wally Minoli repeats again and again throughout our interview.
“I was an idiot,” he says. “I made a mistake. I embarrassed myself. I am sorry.”
You may have seen what Minoli is sorry about. He posted a sign on the front door of his Nob Hill bar and restaurant about being short staffed and unable to serve food Saturday night.
“Geckos is closing our kitchen tonight due to lack of staff,” it read.
But he didn’t stop there. “Special thank you to our Nazi in Santa Fe and our socialist in D.C. for trying to buy votes with extended benefits.”
He might as well have lighted his restaurant on fire. A photo of the sign went
viral on social media. People were livid, vowing never to set foot in his establishments again.
“As a business owner you need to respect both political sides,” one commenter wrote. “They just offended at least 51% of Albuquerque! How idiotic!”
“Can’t get away with slave wages anymore, Geckos,” another person retorted.
And still another: “The only thing shocking about this is that they managed to stay in business this long. Buh-bye.”
Such signs are common these days at restaurants and other low-wage businesses coming out of the COVID-19 shutdown and unable to find enough staff to open fully.
The most polarizing signs accuse workers of being too lazy or too busy reaping the largesse of unemployment benefits. “Sadly, due to government handouts no one wants to work anymore” is a common refrain — never mind that what some of them offer a potential employee are low wages, crummy conditions, crummy customers, the continued threat of catching COVID-19 and little chance for advancement.
“Employees are all working overtime every week to cover shifts because no one wants to work,” a sign at Casa Taco reads. “Kitchens are hot, hours are long, stress is high.”
Well, gosh, who wouldn’t want to work under those conditions?
Despite what his sign suggests, Minoli said he is a Libertarian and voted twice for Libertarian candidate (and former New Mexico Gov.) Gary Johnson for president. He voted for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and has contributed thousands of dollars to both her gubernatorial and congressional campaigns since 2008, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Recently, though, he became frustrated with comments attributed to Lujan Grisham and President Joe Biden indicating that the labor shortage was not the result of pandemic stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits. Minoli says his experience suggests that it is.
He says applicants for line cooks aren’t interested in the job. They submit applications online and then turn down the job, even before asking the salary and hours.
“They’re just applying as a requirement to keep their unemployment,” he says.
The last two applicants who did show up for an interview said they would work if they were paid $15 an hour in cash under the table so they could still receive unemployment benefits, he says.
“The second guy wanted to be paid daily in cash,” he says.
He estimates that 95% of the negative comments he’s received are not about the name-calling but about how much — or how little — he pays his line cooks.
“They call me a cheapskate,” he says. “But I pay at or better than market rates.”
He pays $13 an hour to start, more depending on experience, he says. A check of salary.com and Indeed, a job platform, where 140 openings for line cook jobs in Albuquerque are now listed, supports his claim.
It’s above New Mexico’s $10.50-an-hour minimum wage, below the so-called living wage of $15 an hour.
Minoli says he has never struggled this much to hire cooks since buying the Nob Hill Gecko’s in 2002 and adding the Academy site in 2006. Rarely, he says, have cooks left him to work at other restaurants — even upscale Scalo, next door in Nob Hill.
On Monday, Minoli issued a public apology on Facebook. It said, in part: “Saturday night I made a very stupid decision and referred to our Governor as a Nazi and President Biden as a socialist. I am embarrassed that I made this statement. What happened to the Jews during the holocaust was reprehensible. It is not what I believe.”
The staff at Gecko’s issued a lengthy response:
“We, the workers of Gecko’s Bar and Tapas at Nob Hill, find Wally’s statement posted on Saturday 6/26 to be unprofessional, unacceptable and offensive. … It is not our desire to at all defend or shelter Wally and we hope to use this as a learning experience to make our establishment more welcoming to all members of our community.”
The employees also demanded that Minoli apologize directly to Lujan Grisham, the Jewish community and to them, saying that they have already been hurt personally and financially by his sign.
“We ask the community to stand with the staff of Gecko’s as we decide what steps to take going forward,” they said.
Minoli said he has sent a written apology via text to Lujan Grisham and a letter of apology to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque.
The governor responded early Wednesday, leaving a voicemail acknowledging that she had received his message and appreciated it. She also said she had some ideas going forward, left her work number and invited him to call her.
Minoli said the two communicated further and that the governor plans to visit his establishment at some point, and the two would talk further.
As for apologizing to his staff, he said he has begun to speak to each one individually and is setting up a meeting to speak to the Nob Hill staff as a whole. In addition, he is closing the Nob Hill location for a week to give staff time off — with pay — and away from the tumult. It will reopen Wednesday. The Academy location will remain open.
Two blocks east of Gecko’s in Nob Hill, The Farmacy restaurant also struggles to find enough line cooks. It offers a full-time annual salary of $26,000, slightly less than Gecko’s. On Monday, The Farmacy announced prices would be raised to pay staff more. Public response has been warm and approving.
It’s easy to suggest that paying employees more will eradicate the labor shortage, but it’s a far more complex issue, and not every restaurant would survive an increase in prices.
It’s also easy to boycott a restaurant, but it’s the employees who suffer the most.
The service industry is facing a reckoning, and in many ways, that’s a good thing. For now, may I suggest we accept genuine apologies, tip well and remind restaurateurs that serving up a side of polarizing and demeaning politics leaves a very bad taste.