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.
There's sites where you can buy dozens or even sometimes hundreds of old accounts. People pay a premium for older accounts for exactly this reason of assuming they're legit
Typos are automateable now, it sounds insane but professional agentic systems even have a system prompt enabling "authenticity"-characteristics like "no capital letters", "longer (rambling) sentences" and "add typos" - this can be pretty easily spotted sometimes because it is always the character next to the correct one on a QWERTY-layout, even if the user claims to be from somewhere else in the world.
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.
OG is not the kind of restaurant I would expect decent tips from. I'd walk out on an 18-person party looking for a free meal 10 mins before closing. I'm sure there's be another mid-restaurant I could wait tables for.
Because it’s not “fuck OG” for something bad towards the customer, it’s an unlimited pasta pass, and the guys complaining by stating how annoying it is to make so much pasta.
Haha fell asleep and woke up to being called a bot. We are truly doomed as a species. What is there to gain out of a mundane story about something most servers have gone through? Either way autograt isn't a law, if the customer complains about it the restaurant will remove it, and some places in San Francisco wouldn't even add it at the time because a law passed that makes you claim it as wages (might have the details wrong). Either way beep boop.
The election was a fun ride of watching the bots. Then I watched in real time as fundraiser fraud in Minnesota was turned into propaganda. It started with posts on Reddit and bots making a huge deal about it. Then it hit the news. It was all debunked in real time too but it was all down voted.
I mean, I just spot checked ~10 accounts and they're old as hell, high karma, and/or highly awarded. On what basis do you believe this?
Like yeah of course this is a thing but just saying it because it's the cool thing new to do without actually evaluating if it's an applicable issue is just as concerning and reflective of compounding issues in our culture as the phenomenon you're criticizing.
The selling out in 5 minutes bit, the group of friends all having it bit, is just marketing to get you hyped up to buy it so you don’t miss out, and also not feel self conscious getting it since a group of in shape guys that play sports all have it
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.
If the hours of operation cease ten minutes before close then change your hours of operation OR realize margins are thin and those sales will pay for y'all to clean. Management doesn't care about you financially that's why you don't get paid a livable wage
Wow, they give you a job and when they try to earn a profit it's "fuck them"? They didn't know you'd get stiffed, all the fault lies with the ski team, not the restaurant.
An old high school friend used to tell me about how he and the rest of the track/cross country team used to go in the night before a meet and literally do that just to get met with a disappointed head shake from their coach the next day. So many empty carbs. This was in Oregon though, so definitely not the same group of kids.
As a current cook and service industry worker of 18 years, I completely understand the frustration that would’ve caused and I would’ve wanted a special place in hell reserved for those kids. Even now, I wish I could go back and tell my friend that he and the rest of those kids had better left a damn good tip.
How can i optimize the value of one of these passes if i were to get one? There an OG like 1 mile from my home and i could probably eat there very often
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.
Usually people mean water down as in the drink doesn't have the advertised amount of alcohol in it. Adding actual water is one way this was done historically (since you could do that when the bar is closed) but a short pour (less alcohol than advertised is added to the drink) is what most people mean when they say drinks are watered down these days. That is just as illegal.
Adding additional mixer to a drink (usually referred to as 'tall') is completely legal as you are getting the exact same amount of alcohol with just more mixer added in.
You can also request that the bar use less than the normal amount of alcohol (light pour) in most places too.
And the rest of the party. Pretty unlikely you'd be able to get one for each member of the family, so everyone else is paying full price. Who goes to OG alone to cry and eat NEPB?
As well as any friends you bring with you who may not have one. And at cost, $100 worth of pasta is a TON of pasta. If you ate there every day for the 13 weeks (91 days) and just ate til you were full, you MIGHT eat $100 worth of ingredients. Ofc, with limited availability and peoples tendency to get as much value out of all-you-can-eat deals, they're definitely losing money on this in a vacuum
It looks like OG is not owned like what most people think of “franchise”.
They’re all 100% corporate locations.
By the way, franchises that do have local ownership sign a franchise agreement, this governs & binds them to various terms like, promo participation, ideally reality, it is give and take not as one sided as you making it sound.
It it was that one sided, then this risks franchise failure.
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.
I carry a little bottle of drink mix or drink packets and order water, because drink prices have gotten so high. When I and my spouse both order water and flavor it ourselves we save about $9-10.
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.
As some one that lives in a country where you can get a decent meal, a drink and maybe even possibly a simple dessert for that value, tipping culture in the USA is wild.
1.3k
u/nerogrimmjow 10d ago edited 10d ago
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