Olive Garden Manager Fired For Fulfilling Customer Request For White Server

Source: John Greim / Getty

A white woman visited an Olive Garden in Evansville, Indiana on Saturday only to insult members of the staff for their race. According to reports from NBC News, she said a black hostess should be a stripper and demanded that she be waited on by a someone white. The manager on duty ended up giving in to her request and because of that, she has since been fired.

Amira Donahue, the 16-year-old hostess, told the outlet that the woman entered with a few other people during their dinner rush.

“She made comments about me to my coworkers concerning my race and saying that I should work at a strip club instead,” Donahue told the outlet. “She asked if I’m even black and if I am from here.”

The customer got angry when she was seated in an area with a black server, Donahue recalled. That’s when she shouted at a manager, who ended up moving her to an area with a white server, instead. Donahue told NBC that she was so shaken by the encounter that she started to cry.

Olive Garden spokeswoman Meagan Bernstein told NBC News that the restaurant chain does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. She added that after an investigation on Monday, “we made the decision to separate with the manager involved.”

This incident was chronicled by Maxwell Robbins, who was eating at the restaurant at the time and posted her experience to Facebook. In her post, she vowed to never return to that Olive Garden location and by Thursday, Robbins’ post had been shared thousands of times.

“The manager without hesitation ensures that they will not receive service from a person of color,” Robbins wrote, adding that the customer “should’ve been refused service for even asking something like that!!”

“The young lady was in tears and had no one to support her,” Robbins told NBC. “So I felt if I didn’t write this post, nothing would have happened and she would continue to go to work for a place that she feels uncomfortable at and unwanted at.”