Taitague Not Wanting to Tip Restaurant Servers Opens Broader Discussion About the Minimum Wage and Taxes

Editorial by Troy Torres, Kandit News and Views

A lot of things Telo Taitague says go in the right side of my ear, and come out the left. She’s like our local MTG. Last week, though, this Guam senator said something during a public hearing about a group of workers that caught my attention. What she said about restaurant servers really needs to be addressed, but far beyond the rather shallow way she disparaged Guam’s minimum wage employees.

Ms. Taitague, a homeowner with net worth in the six figures who is used to driving a Lexus, is paid by the taxpayers – including restaurant servers – $55,000 a year. In a public hearing on a bill proposing to make the business privilege tax visible on gross receipts, Ms. Taitague questioned Department of Revenue and Taxation officials on whether she could refuse to pay a server’s fee that a restaurant builds into the final dine-in bill.

She complained that sometimes she doesn’t want to pay the fee if she is not served well.

Imagine that. A home-owning, Lexus-driving, $55,000-a-year making senator who has the money to dine out in style, complaining that a minimum wage-making, struggling-to-pay-the-rent working, restaurant server shouldn’t get a $3.55 tip. All because the working-two-jobs-to-make-ends-meet server likely didn’t refill her margarita halfway through the gulp, or send out her french fries with ketchup.

While it is tempting to spend a whole lot of time berating Senator Taitague for having zero disregard in an almost Marie Antoinette reprisal of “Let them eat cake” disconnection from the problems of our people, there is a more important conversation to be had here.

I don’t know the exact data, but I’ll bet all the tip money Ms. Taitague doesn’t want to pay servers that the vast majority of restaurant servers are paid minimum wage. They come closer to making ends meet from tips. If the restaurant worker industry is what it was when I was a Capricciosa waiter 25 years ago, then a good number of servers work more than one job. But unlike 25 years ago, the service economy today sucks. The tourists aren’t coming and dining in the droves as they did before the pandemic.

Senator Taitague and her colleagues are in positions to do something about this. If she’s so keen on improving service industry standards, she should put her money where her mouth is and introduce and pass legislation to raise the minimum wage. But she can’t stop there, because the restaurant industry will need to be able to absorb such a shock. She and the other senators should exempt restaurants from paying the BPT so they can afford to pay their employees more. Maybe that way, they wouldn’t have to charge a server’s fee or a kitchen fee or a busing fee to help the business and the employees to make just a little bit more to live just a little closer to the wealthy standard of living Ms. Taitague enjoys.

You know, as a taxpayer, I feel shortchanged by the service we’re all not getting from Telo Taitague and some of those other elected officials. Can we cut their pay?

Jesus, Maria, yan Jose.

Taimamalao na pala’an.