Who Needs an Olive Garden?
So last Sunday night was interesting.
It's taken me a while to get this on paper (er.....computer). A group of us went out for a friend's birthday dinner. What better place to celebrate than the Olive Garden? I mean, I really like the Olive Garden. I especially like the Tour of Italy and the chicken parmesan. mmm, mmm, good. The one complaint I have about OG, is that usually they take FOREVER to bring you your food. Sunday night was no different. My sister, Grace and I arrived later than everyone else cuz I got caught up working with my horse for longer than I intended....that's a horse for you! Anyway, we got there, but we had already eaten, thanks to Egyptian influence, so we were just going to snack on "Neverending Salad" and breadsticks. Oh, but then we decided that it wouldn't be right to eat the salad without buying anything, so we ordered an appetizer. I love Spinach-artichoke dip!
So after a good, long, healthy wait, we got our food, gave thanks, and began to eat. Then came the bill....(not right away of course). This is where it all began. Of course, whenever you get a rather large party together to go out to eat, it is often a challenge to organize the payment of the bill, what with some people putting in cash, others credit cards...it's a mess! For some odd reason, our esteemed server split the bill, rather haphazardly I might add, two ways. One had the majority of the meals on it...the other, only 4 or so. Mind you, there were about 13 of us. The smaller bill got tallied and paid right away....the second, not so easy. Somehow we came up short (typical, right?). But not short a few bucks....try $50.00! Whoa! So being the wonderful mathematician that I am, I decided to take control of the bill and money counting. I went down the list, and after putting initials by everyone's meal, I found that we were overcharged by 3 salads and one Stuffed Chicken Marsala. So I contested it, and that is where things started to go awry.
The server argued (unsuccessfully) that we were not mischarged and that the salad charges were because two people split a meal, and my sister and I ordered an appetizer (which doesn't include a salad). Well, excuse me, but when you place a HUGE bowl of neverending salad on the table, it only makes sense to share it with others. The point of the matter, which my friend Sonya was so quick to share with the server, was that we were not told that we were going to get charged for the salad. It was just placed in front of us and we started chowing, and then we ordered the appetizer cuz we wanted to justify eating the salad! Its NEVERENDING SALAD!!!! No one can finish it by themselves!!!!! There's no way that we even ATE $2.95 worth of that NEVERENDING SALAD. Did I make my point?
So she took the bill back and took off the few items that were mischarged. So we tallied up the cash again, and were still short. Then I did a double take....they had automatically included 18% gratuity (cuz we were a party of 8 or more), but what I found funny was that the 18% gratuity was the same on both bills, even though there was more than a $20.00 spread between the two bills. How does that work?
So I contested that. This seemed to put the icing on the cake for this server. She couldn't believe that I actually wanted to recalculate HER gratuity! Oh the nerve of some customers! Before long, the manager on duty came over to the table in a very defensive stance (hands in the air as if we were attacking him). He claimed he had "comped" us the 3 salads and extra chicken marsala. My friend, David, made the point clear to the manager that he didn't "comp" us the meals, but that he just credited back what was mischarged, and that the gratuity should have been adjusted as well. (In the meantime we recalculated the gratuity and realized that the difference was only a couple bucks so we thought we would pay it anyway.) We told the manager not to adjust anything, but just to take the bill and we'd be done. Of course he couldn't take it that minute (for some reason), and came back later with an adjusted bill....just what we DIDN'T want. Arggghhh...
We recalculated, David took the cash and threw in his credit card and we gave the bill to the server. She brought back our 3 cards and then realized that she had closed out someone else's bill with our cards!!! Wait...who hired this girl anyway? Anyway, I think she got the mess fixed (I'll check my bank statement online), and we got out of there. The whole ordeal took about 40 minutes!!! That's rediculous! Just to pay our bill? I never knew giving money to someone would be such a challenge!
Words to live by....Tour of Italy isn't that good.
It's taken me a while to get this on paper (er.....computer). A group of us went out for a friend's birthday dinner. What better place to celebrate than the Olive Garden? I mean, I really like the Olive Garden. I especially like the Tour of Italy and the chicken parmesan. mmm, mmm, good. The one complaint I have about OG, is that usually they take FOREVER to bring you your food. Sunday night was no different. My sister, Grace and I arrived later than everyone else cuz I got caught up working with my horse for longer than I intended....that's a horse for you! Anyway, we got there, but we had already eaten, thanks to Egyptian influence, so we were just going to snack on "Neverending Salad" and breadsticks. Oh, but then we decided that it wouldn't be right to eat the salad without buying anything, so we ordered an appetizer. I love Spinach-artichoke dip!
So after a good, long, healthy wait, we got our food, gave thanks, and began to eat. Then came the bill....(not right away of course). This is where it all began. Of course, whenever you get a rather large party together to go out to eat, it is often a challenge to organize the payment of the bill, what with some people putting in cash, others credit cards...it's a mess! For some odd reason, our esteemed server split the bill, rather haphazardly I might add, two ways. One had the majority of the meals on it...the other, only 4 or so. Mind you, there were about 13 of us. The smaller bill got tallied and paid right away....the second, not so easy. Somehow we came up short (typical, right?). But not short a few bucks....try $50.00! Whoa! So being the wonderful mathematician that I am, I decided to take control of the bill and money counting. I went down the list, and after putting initials by everyone's meal, I found that we were overcharged by 3 salads and one Stuffed Chicken Marsala. So I contested it, and that is where things started to go awry.
The server argued (unsuccessfully) that we were not mischarged and that the salad charges were because two people split a meal, and my sister and I ordered an appetizer (which doesn't include a salad). Well, excuse me, but when you place a HUGE bowl of neverending salad on the table, it only makes sense to share it with others. The point of the matter, which my friend Sonya was so quick to share with the server, was that we were not told that we were going to get charged for the salad. It was just placed in front of us and we started chowing, and then we ordered the appetizer cuz we wanted to justify eating the salad! Its NEVERENDING SALAD!!!! No one can finish it by themselves!!!!! There's no way that we even ATE $2.95 worth of that NEVERENDING SALAD. Did I make my point?
So she took the bill back and took off the few items that were mischarged. So we tallied up the cash again, and were still short. Then I did a double take....they had automatically included 18% gratuity (cuz we were a party of 8 or more), but what I found funny was that the 18% gratuity was the same on both bills, even though there was more than a $20.00 spread between the two bills. How does that work?
So I contested that. This seemed to put the icing on the cake for this server. She couldn't believe that I actually wanted to recalculate HER gratuity! Oh the nerve of some customers! Before long, the manager on duty came over to the table in a very defensive stance (hands in the air as if we were attacking him). He claimed he had "comped" us the 3 salads and extra chicken marsala. My friend, David, made the point clear to the manager that he didn't "comp" us the meals, but that he just credited back what was mischarged, and that the gratuity should have been adjusted as well. (In the meantime we recalculated the gratuity and realized that the difference was only a couple bucks so we thought we would pay it anyway.) We told the manager not to adjust anything, but just to take the bill and we'd be done. Of course he couldn't take it that minute (for some reason), and came back later with an adjusted bill....just what we DIDN'T want. Arggghhh...
We recalculated, David took the cash and threw in his credit card and we gave the bill to the server. She brought back our 3 cards and then realized that she had closed out someone else's bill with our cards!!! Wait...who hired this girl anyway? Anyway, I think she got the mess fixed (I'll check my bank statement online), and we got out of there. The whole ordeal took about 40 minutes!!! That's rediculous! Just to pay our bill? I never knew giving money to someone would be such a challenge!
Words to live by....Tour of Italy isn't that good.
posted by SingingCowgirl at
6:35 AM
1 Comments:
yeah, the whole salad thing is lame at olive garden. they should just stop making it neverending, or else they should let everyone eat it, like the breadsticks. i went out with a friend one time and one of us ordered a whole meal, which comes with salad, and the other ordered soup. we asked for an extra plate so we could share the salad, and were told we would normally have to be charged for it, but i think our server was cool and didn't make a big deal of it. anyway i thought it was lame. how on earth is one person supposed to eat it? if they don't mind sharing, why should olive garden care???
and if olive garden DOES care, fine. just stop making it neverending, like i said!!
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grackyfrogg, at 7:55 AM
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