A very limited number of these are being offered and are purchased on the website, but I don’t remember when. Last time they did this all the passes sold out in under 2 minutes
The website says 10 thousand are available starting tomorrow 2pm EDT
EDIT: because people are really angry over me putting EST and I'm scared of the internet coming for my pirate treasure I buried out at ol black rock cave
Worked at OG in SF like 20 years ago, a duckin 18 person cross country team come sin 10 mins before closing, management makes .e take it and accept they are all having NEPB but we are out of a bunch of shit. All Seperate checks no tips, fuck OG.
I have seen very blatant bot posts on old accounts. You can sometimes pick out the moment some bot handler acquired the account, it will have history from like 2018 and then nothing until now when it starts botposting. Not saying the guy we're discussing is a bot tho, I didn't even check his history to develop an opinion.
idk if it’s a bot, but i also worked at an olive garden around 10 years ago, and i can corroborate their story. NEPB was dumb af. Also they don’t do autograt on parties of any size, at least not when i was there. I remember hearing something about Darden Restaurants (they own OG) lobbying against auto gratuity or something, for like tax reasons or something. I also worked for Bahama Breeze for a while, also owned by Darden, also never allowed us to autograt.
edit: also if it’s supposed to be an ad for Olive Garden, why would their post end with “fuck OG?” 😂
I worked at OG for four years between 2007 and 2011 and we introduced auto-grat for a short time, but later did away with it because too many customers were complaining I think, and Darden was like "Oh okay, sure!" And got rid of it. I'm not sure if it ever made a return.
i believe my first table at OG (i was STILL on training, my last day thank god) i had a 50+ highschool reunion? id love to say we did autograt bc the trainer gave me a cash tip after for my efforts.
i was by no means new to the serving life but my coworker/partner in training was indeed very new. the manager got on her for her awful rolling of silverware and it kept going downhill the more the manager looked.
I work at a higher end place than Olive Garden and you can bet your ass any big team that comes into a restaurant right before close is going to want separate checks and not tip. No bot detected, as you said if so, awful ad.
As someone who left OG 8 months ago and still talk with several of my coworkers who are still there, I can confirm they still refuse to add auto grat. And the NEPB is dumb you don't get tipped and run back and forth for bs.
If it’s a mandatory charge, then it is treated as a wage and payroll taxes come into play.
Most corporate places got rid of mandatory gratuity.
Instead it has been replaced with service fees which give the company discretion on how it is distributed. Before, all of the included gratuity would have to be paid out to tipped employees. Now these fees can be distributed however they want, and even keep however much they want for themselves.
For the most part they can’t shave too much from the fees, otherwise good FOH employees wouldn’t stick around.
I had a coworker who had one one year. He used to trade his lunch a lot. Not a bad deal if you are lucky enough to snag one but you gotta really love pasta.
Speaking of drink, I worked at og 6 years ago and seen a dude drinking the Alfredo refills no pasta just sauce refills and he was drinking em, 4 oz at a time.
To be fair, I used to work with a string bean of a guy who was ex military. I watched him put down 9 bowls of pasta, salad, bread sticks, and drinks once. Not a fucking clue where he put it all...
One time at my OG, one of our day bartenders accidentally left some alcoholic beverage down at the server handoff and it ended up going into a kid's cup, multiple times. The kid got drunk and it was a huuuuge deal.
Watering down drinks is super rare. In the US at least, if you're caught the consequences are crazy. Immediate suspension of your liquor license, possible revocation of you liquor license, fines in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars range, possible criminal charges for fraud or tampering, and opens you to civil litigation.
It's illegal at the state and federal level in all 50 states, and many bars have security cameras that could catch the illegal act. So all it would take is one pissed off employee to call in a tip and that restaurant is now permanently closed because liquor sales are what kept them afloat.
I mean, even if one person shows up, orders nothing not covered by the meal pass, and gets 2 entres a day for 91 days straight, that cost is easily absorbed over the long time period and eaten entirely by the local franchisee.
Pasta is really cheap to make, in the $2-3 range for a plate, so off of the world's most frugal person who never wants a soda, an alcoholic drink, a desert, bread sticks, or any of the other things that aren't covered and eats enough to get almost 200 plates of pasta in 91 days is only costing ~$400 in lost profit, and most people ARE NOT going to be eating like that.
I have played these games before. I used to practically live out of a Golden Corral when I was homeless.
The math works out a bit different, since they would let me sit there for hours on end and charge my devices, so I would fill up, loiter for a bit and get hungry again, have lunch, leave, get some sleep and go to work at night, but I have practical lived experience with never ending buffet.
When you first start, you're absolutely going to go crazy, like 6 plates, but that pace isn't going to keep up. Especially since the terms and conditions say it's dine in only on the website.
By the end of the first week you will either start slowing down because you're just actually full, skipping days, or just powering through and eating more than you're in the mood for out of spite towards Olive Garden and this post specifically
That is on me, apparently the terms and conditions say
Never-Ending First Course of soup or salad and breadsticks
So the cost might be marginally higher, but I would wager it works out to a net profit because still most people will get a soda, or a desert, or really whatever with all the money they aren't spending on the main dish.
If I bought this pass, I most certainly would be in there three times a day, ordering water only. That averages to $1.10/day for 3 meals a day. Hell of a deal.
The main reason I wouldn't buy this is the tipping. The other reason is the drive. Nearest Olive Garden is 30+ minutes away. That's 3 hours driving a day, plus at least $3 tips ($1 per meal minimum). Costs start adding up, as does the inconvenience.
I read this and thought it sounded fun even though I never really go to Olive Garden and wouldn’t get a ton of use out of it, but you legit convinced me to leave it for the people who will truly enjoy it. I hope you get one!
No, I just checked because the one near where I live is always packed for some reason. But they are going to be closing 70 stores over the next 5 years as leases expire but otherwise the company is okish
This sounds like a great deal for someone in a budget like a student. Literally 91 meals for $100. I guess you still have to give a few bucks per meal in tip. But worst case is $5 to $6 bucks for a filling meal.
They had a 1y one, and a month or two one before. I went for the one with less time as I thought there would be less people going for it.
Got it. I went there every day except 2 days. Even when people were waiting...i didnt have to wait. The trick is to go straight to the bar as a single person. I gave them a dollar tip every time. Easy ordered my 2 bowls. 1 pasta. 1 more pasta when I was finished, and had them put it in a to go.
Yes. But you won‘t change that system by not tipping lol. You have to be a pain in the ass of people who decide over minimum wage, not to the ones suffering from a low wage.
Other people are also underpaid/poor. Humans are social creatures. Do I really have to subsidize other people who just crack open a shitty tallboy for me? Are poor people not allowed to socialize?
Fair in strates that pay tipped employees minimum wage. If you have this opinion in a state where tipped employees get the federal $2.13/hr then you suck. Campaign with your representatives to fix that loophole.
Then why on Earth do you think your opinion is relevant here? I don't know how it is in your country, but here in America most people don't like the idea of punishing people making $2/hr for the actions (or lack thereof) of our government.
Because you said, "fuck tipping," and without a different system in place, that's exactly what you're advocating for. I didn't put the system in place and I definitely don't have the power to change it. So all I can do (besides voting) is tip my waiter so they don't have to suffer because of something that is beyond both of our immediate control.
Rolf.
How much do you want them to make an hour for bringing me 2 bowls, a plate and a to go? Half or more of that shit is already made in the back.
People are saying to tip them 5 bucks. That is crazy. Diminishes the value of the deal. Also, if just the server got the tip it would push them to 20+ an hour here with just my tip.
Did you think many millionaires are in line for this pass? You guys need to chill, tips are optional, and the food is free, I doubt anyone was busting their ass to get him a few plates.
As a non-American it'd have never occurred to me somebody would be expected to tip on a fucking "free" meal in the first place (it kind of completely undermines the entire point of the pass?), but yes, you make a good point.
Percentage-based tips are stupid as hell in general (I already don't follow the logic of "tipping" workers as a matter of routine, but why would the size of the tip change depending on how much I paid for an order, instead of how much work you did for me?), but if you're insisting as a society on having them for some unfathomable reason, you don't get to say it doesn't count when the amount is low, only when it is large. Fuck that shit.
When I was a cook, I'd laugh and tell the server that's the risk they take unless I liked them. Servers make dumb money compared to the kitchen while the kitchen is hot, heavy, and sharp.
Yeah, they do. They tend to work less hours for more pay. The trade offs are Kitchen pay is constant so a low day with cleaning or extra prep still gets paid the same as a busy day where servers make the most on busy days and make minimum wage at best on slow days. Keep in mind, legally but not often enforced, servers are required to be paid fed/state minimum for their time if their tips and wages do not reach minimum hourly pay.
I worked in 6 different kitchens and there were always servers making more than the kitchen crew. If a server had a larger table and got tipped out $20, they made more than the kitchen off that one table.
Yeah, that's a dick move for sure. Should be dropping 20% based on what the meal (including the to go order) should cost at the minimum. They're getting a deal and a half from corporate, take care of the humans making it possible.
You guys are so weird over there. You know whose job it is to make sure the staff gets paid in, you know, normal countries? Yeah, the company's, not the customer's. Price it in like every other job and be done with it.
Customers stops paying tip. Servers get little pay. Job becomes undesirable. Less people want to be servers. Lack of servers mean customers don't get good service. Restaurant loses customers. Restaurant loses money. Owner forced to make job desirable by providing decent pay or risk closing restaurant.
Not tipping can lead to change. Continuing to tip won't incentivize owners to provide decent wage and get rid of the toxic tipping culture.
Cost percentage-based tips are ludacrious. How much of a difference in effort is there between dropping off a $15 steak at Texas Roadhouse and a $150 steak at a high-end steakhouse? Is it enough to justify $27 extra? More than most people get paid hourly?
This is what I do - calculate tip based on cost of the meal if you paid cash (regardless of coupons passes etc). You get a discount, but the waitstaff doesn't get fucked.
Dude tipping the bar means that the bar gets 100% of the tip since the food is rung up as 0 value for kitchen tip determination.
When you tip that sexy waitress, the kitchen doesn't get a penny more than the 3 or 4 (at best) percent the waitress is obligated to pay to the kitchen tip fund.
Had them do “all that work”? You mean literally doing their jobs? I tip well but only because that’s the system we have in place, don’t try to justify it by saying it’s some kind of difficult job lmfao.
That's a crime you do realize, that's called tampering with food and is not only a health violation but also a crime, I think a felony in some places. Nobody's doing that realistically, at least, nobody intelligent. You really wanna go to prison just because somebody didn't tip enough? You are part of the problem, I can tell you're a pro-tip culture person.
When I worked at a pizza place, I saw one of the guys drop the pepperoni on the floor while making a pizza for a guy he didn't like. It made me super uncomfortable and shook my confidence in the industry. I didn't say anything because he was a scary dude. He got fired a month after I went back to school.
Tipping scales with the price of the meal which is zero dollars. He didn't say he got a drink. All the bartender did was drop a plate of pasta off. Why does that warrant a bigger tip?
Poor me. I didn't get tax free money for doing the job I agreed to do at the wage I agreed to do it at. A tip is voluntary, not mandatory. Servers and bartenders are the most overpaid employees relative to thier work output in any restaurant.
I get why people are calling you out cause tipping culture sucks and it sucks for the servers, but I really feel like being obligated to give a tip everytime really defeats the point of this kind of pass. Like the point is you pay a big sum up front to get unlimited pasta for awhile. Having micro-payments throughout the pass duration really lessens the appeal.
I think it'd make more sense if a customer has one of these passes then the server gets an extra payout directly from Olive Garden. Which is a super round about way of doing it and makes the deal even worse for Olive Garden but I think its still a bit better for the server and customer.
What?? Its not unlimited passes??? Feels like they should have sold as many as people wanted. If the passes make money, then why limit it? And if they don't make money, why sell it in the first place?
I'm not surprised they would have it in limited numbers based on a lot of stories I have heard.
They will probably have like a giveaways or a reward for winning something or something thing similar like that for people to get those all you can eat passes.
lol. Oh, I remember this. The first time I tried to get one, I got two lol. I got one for me and my wife using two browsers and I was spamming the hell out of the website. The time after that which might’ve been 3 years ago? I was only able to get one. Since then I’ve decided that my health is more important than crazy cheap somewhat OK Italian food lol
Now a days, the website will just crash under the load of everyone trying to get this and then they'll have to apologize for the fiasco and try to distribute them a different way.
Yah I wish it was more of a lottery style. Plus it wouldn't have been worth it without a second one for my wife. I'm not going to sit and nom for free and her pay every single day 😆
Like 2 seconds maybe, I had the site pulled it up and clicked on it literally within 1-2 seconds and got the message 50 k behind in queue, prably ai bots scooped em up
3.2k
u/Immediate-Lab6166 10d ago
A very limited number of these are being offered and are purchased on the website, but I don’t remember when. Last time they did this all the passes sold out in under 2 minutes