Olive Garden fires manager accused of obeying an Indiana customer’s racist demand
A manager at an Olive Garden is accused of complying with a customer’s request for a server who is not black, media outlets report.
The restaurant chain has fired the manager, saying it has “zero tolerance for discrimination.”
The woman seated with a black employee Saturday night in Evansville, Indiana, asked the manager for a white server instead, the Courier Journal reported. Employees say the manager obeyed her demand, the newspaper reported.
Maxwell Robbins, who was eating at the Olive Garden, said he witnessed the white customers refuse to be served by a “colored” employee, according to a Facebook post. Robbins said one of the employees was crying and had no support, TODAY reported.
“I felt the need to post that on Facebook because I do not think anyone would have stood up for those girls,” Robbins told TODAY. “They would’ve continued to go to work somewhere they were not comfortable.”
Amira Donahue, a 16-year-old hostess, said the customer commented about her race and said she should be working at a strip club, NBC News reported.
“She asked if I’m even black and if I am from here,” Donahue told NBC News.
In a statement, Olive Garden condemned discrimination, The Hill reported.
“We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, and the manager involved no longer works for our company,” the company told The Hill.
The Rev. Gerald Arnold, who’s the president of the NAACP chapter in Evansville, said that if the accusations are true, they are concerning, the Courier Journal reported.
“Today, 2020, it grabs you that ... if in fact this is true, we’re still having to deal with those kinds of issues,” Arnold told the newspaper.
This isn’t the first time a request of this type has grabbed attention.
In November, employees at a Buffalo Wild Wings in the Chicago suburb of Naperville were fired after they moved customers away from a man at his request because he didn’t want to sit near black people, McClatchy News reported.
‘He’s gonna die.’ Dispatcher refuses help to man dying of a stroke, Ohio city says
Students can’t say no if asked to dance at Utah school. A mom calls it ‘rape culture’
