Thursday, April 20, 2017

Deep, Dark Olive Garden Secrets


04/20/2017 03:16 pm ET

Guy’s Date With An Olive Garden Manager Unearths Deep, Dark Secrets

This hilarious Twitter thread is even more compelling than unlimited breadsticks.

A San Francisco-based writer blessed the interwebs Wednesday with the apparent answer to a question as old as Olive Garden’s most famous slogan: What exactly would a customer have to do to no longer be considered “family?”

Joe Wadlington wrote on Twitter that he went on a date Tuesday night and discovered his prospective love interest is a former general manager for the chain. But not just any Olive Garden ― his date was the general manager of the Times Square Olive Garden. You know, the one that’s three floors high, charges $400 a head for its New Year’s Eve bash, and leaves everyone wondering why tourists visiting New York are eating at an Olive Garden?
I went on a date last night and the guy meekly shared that he used to be THE GENERAL MANAGER FOR THE TIMES SQUARE OLIVE GARDEN.
Wadlington reacted as any human with a pulse would have: He said he launched into a full-blown interrogation about the restaurant’s innermost workings and, of course, the infamous unlimited salad and breadsticks.
Clearly, he'd seen some shit. So the next hour and a half was me asking questions. I tried to do y'all right.
He related what his date declared the Garden’s worst-case scenario: The horror of running out of unlimited breadsticks is far more upsetting than anything else that can possibly happen at the restaurant.
Q Did y'all ever run out of breadsticks? If so what happened?
A Yes. Twice. Worst shifts of my life. People were angry, kept telling us "no"
"They kept saying, 'OLIVE GARDEN DOESNT DO THAT, our Olive Garden, in Ohio, doesn't do that."
Consider the story Wadlington says his date shared about a knife fight between two women in the restaurant.

“You may be surprised, but yes, Olive Garden running out of breadsticks is worse than a knife fight,” the date reported.
Q: What's the weirdest thing that ever happened?
A: Oh, there was a knife fight.
Q: Tell me everything.
A: Two women. They came together.
Q: Steak knives? Like the knives from the table or BYOK?
A: From the table. So, it started out as a fist fight and the other manger pulled
them apart and put one in the elevator going down to the 1st floor. They were on the third floor. The 2nd woman broke away and ran down the
Stairs. She stopped the elevator on the 2nd floor and grabbed a knife off someone's table.
A: someone else's knife?!
Q: yes
Q: So only one woman had a knife.
A: The other woman picked up a knife off a different table. So the other manager, he was a huge guy, 6'6"
ran down there and pulled them apart again. They were on the first floor at this point. And he threw them out into the street. So they could
deal with it out there.
Q: Did they still have the knives?
A: No, he took them.
Q: Did he give them breadsticks?
A: What? No.
Q: Sorry.
A: What happened after that?
Q: I don't know. They were outside, so they weren't our problem anymore
A: Would you say they're still "family"
A: No.
Q: Wait. You said the shifts where you ran out of breadsticks were the worst. Worse than the shift with a knife fight?
A: You may be surprised, but yes, Olive Garden running out of breadsticks is worse than a knife fight.
Q: No, I totally get it.
The extensive thread also answers many questions we’ve had about Olive Garden. Diners at the Times Square location pay higher prices that those at other locations; the restaurant continues seating until 2 a.m. and hosts mainly Brazilians, Puerto Ricans, and Americansfrom Ohio; and, most importantly, you can’t get kicked out for sitting and eating only as much unlimited salad and breadsticks as you can physically handle.
Q Did anyone order the unlimited soup/salad/breadsticks and stay for 8 hours?
A Why would someone do that?
Q You said they were Americans.
A: Not on my shifts. But if someone wanted to, Olive Garden would not let us remove them. They are "family" and would be allowed to eat.
The Olive Garden did not respond to requests for comment. Wadlington declined to give the name of his date, saying that he’d already been a pretty good sport about the tweets. But he assured The Huffington Post the conversation really happened, though he notes it’s possible his date exaggerated. (Eater reports wait times aren’t as long these days as the two-hour delay Wadlington’s date described.)

Either way, we wish Wadlington and his date a lifetime filled with happiness and pasta passes.

“We will be going on another date,” Wadlington told HuffPost.

No comments: