Olive Garden has donated $5,000 to comedian Ricky Smith’s charity, after he claimed on Twitter that a African-American waitress told him she didn’t like serving black people.
The alleged incident took place at a restaurant in Parma, Ohio.
Smith tweeted on Tuesday: ‘Just got asked to leave @olivegarden because we asked for a new server because our server said she doesn’t like serving blacks…’
He said in another tweet: ‘The Parma police was cool in handling the situation but told us it was in @olivegarden’s right to ask us to leave the restaurant.’
In a series of tweets, he said: ‘And it was a black waitress who said she doesn’t like serving blacks.
‘Asked the manager for a new waitress and she said our options were to have her as our waitress or leave.
‘Told her we weren’t leaving and to call the cops. And here we are…. @olivegarden.’
An Olive Garden employee said in a 911 call obtained by News Net 5: ‘I need backup sent here. We have customers who are getting, I would say, rowdy with our only female manager.’
The caller said: ‘They are making racist comments and refuse to leave the restaurant.’
During the call, the employee said: ‘They were making sexual comments to our server.
‘And the next thing was they got ID’d for alcohol and they wanted to buy more alcohol than their ID allowed, so like they wanted to buy alcohol for minors.’
The caller said that ‘it started to get racial and they asked for a server who is white’.
Smith wrote on Twitter Wednesday: ‘False info on the the 911 call the young lady gave.’
Olive Garden said in a Wednesday statement: ‘Our number one goal is to create a welcoming environment for every one of our guests each day.
‘We take these allegations seriously, and discrimination of any sort will not be tolerated in our restaurants.
‘Olive Garden’s executive vice president of Operations has reached out to Mr. Smith to personally apologize and invite him back to our restaurant to make things right.
‘The employees involved have been placed on leave pending the outcome of our investigation.’
Smith said in a series of Wednesday tweets that he spoke to Olive Garden’s VP of Operations.
He wrote: ‘He, on behalf of Olive Garden apologized for what happened to me and my friends yesterday.’
‘Said the manager (new to the position) and waitress serving us were 100% in the wrong. Said me and my friends did nothing wrong.’
Smith also tweeted that he asked for the waitress and manager to not be fired.
He told TMZ that Olive Garden donated $5,000 to his charity Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere (RAKE) and gave him a $1,000 gift card which he’s planning to use on people in need.
Source: Daily Mail UK
BCNN1 WP 