Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Albany

Easily one of the worst, if not the worst experience I have had at a restaurant. My best friend and I evacuated to Albany from the Orlando area to escape Hurricane Irma. Our town is currently without power, so we will be residing in Albany with family for the remainder of the week. Albany has been nothing but kind to us. We have experienced great amenities and great meals, that being said today's lunch was less than sub-par.

Helping out her family, we took her kid cousins to Olive Garden for lunch today around noon. The restaurant was not busy at all and we were seated immediately. Our waiter, Montrell(sp?), started out fine as he took our drink order and delivered them promptly. Our issues started after ordering our meal. We ordered two create your own pastas, two children's meals, and sauce for our breadsticks. Soon after we received stale breadsticks and no sauce. Our waiter informed us the sauce would be out shortly, but after 15 minutes, we realized it wasn't coming and our waiter had not been by. When we were able to get his attention, we reminded him we were still waiting, and I say reminded because he had completely forgotten. It took another 10 minutes for him to bring the sauce without more breadsticks being brought to the table, mind you we had already eaten the stale ones because we were accompanied by two hungry children.

Addition to waiting for something as simple as breadsticks, we dealt with a waiter who was inattentive. He never once cleared our table or motioned for someone to clear it. He brought our main entrees while our table was full of empty cups, soup bowls and salad dishes. It was then that a busboy realized our table was full and cleared it. Our waiter also disregarded my request to bring both of the children water as they had finished their sodas. He might have visited our table about 4 times. The food was standard Olive Garden quality, so no complaints there.

Our experience unfortunately did not end there. We paid with a hundred dollar bill and received a hundred dollars back in various bills and coins. Correct me if I'm wrong, but standard practice is to charge whatever our bill was and give us the remaining change. We were confused as to why this happened, so we asked for a manager. Fifteen minutes later, a female manager came to our table and asked what the issue was. We proceeded to tell her about our confusion and she then left and sent our waiter over. Obviously, our issue was with how our waiter handled the bill, which put us in a very awkward position. Very upset that a floor manager chose not to help us understand the situation, most likely due to our age.

Us being in our early twenties, we often get treated as though our service is not as important as other guests who are older, due to the assumption we won't tip as well. (Our thoughts were confirmed as we saw our waiter diligently attending older patrons at the tables surrounding ours - always making sure their drinks were full and their tables cleared.) I'm sorry that this is a common thought because the below average service that was given resulted in a below average tip. Being raised right, when given respectful service, I tip exceptionally well.

Evacuating has been stressful and this encounter did not help one bit.

Highly disappointed!

Sincerely,

an avid Olive...

It saddens me to write this. While I'm very upset I also have mixed feelings about this horrible experience with the employees on shift 03/10/2023 around 9pm. I called to place an order for pickup and the young man answered the phone and recited the "How can I provide you with excellent service today question! Needless to say this customer service experience rendered was horrific. I placed my order, he took a deep breath and stated is that it. I said excuse me. I then stated that his tone was rude and the deep breath was a sure giveaway that I was bothering him. I then told him that I've been in customer service for over 26 years and in management 17 of those years. He then said and I quote "AND"over and over again. I cancelled the order and before I could ask to speak to a manager he hung up in my face. I called back, Nicole answered and while she was talking I heard this young man saying some ver obscene things about me. I asked for a manager, she hung up on me while pretending to transfer the call. I then called a third time and this time Natalie answered and gave the customer service experience that was promised. I was transferred to the manager on duty Lou, who apologized for his employees and then tried to rectify the situation by offering a gift card. While I am extremely upset by the way I was treated I want to give Lou and Natalie their flowers for doing their absolute best to do as promised. Olive garden is known for it's family oriented style, and needless to say I no longer feel like family. I can't remember the young Man's name who was so very rude but I did notate it on a scratch piece of paper on my counter at home. I will be contacting corporate. This is...

Edited, July 2019: I returned to this Olive Garden because I had a gift card. To be honest, after my last experience I probably won't have chosen to return without the gift card. This time, 4 of us met there for a 12:30 lunch on a Saturday. The servers were cheerful and friendly, but the food was extremely slow again even though the restaurant wasn't busy.

I added one star to my last review because at least this time the food was as expected and the service while still slow was at least friendly and competent. I still stand by my previous summation though: "Management needs to step up their game: train, hire better employees, and put the failing employees on an improvement plan."

May 2019: This Olive Garden is struggling. The service is consistently slow: I arrived a few minutes early for our 6:30 reservation on a weeknight when business was steady but not packed. It still took them 10 minutes past our reservation time to seat us even though the tables were empty. The server was confused: she failed to give all of the party members flatware, forgot one person's entree, and forgot to take one person's order. The food was inconsistent at best: three of us ordered the stuffed Chicken Marsala. It arrived with the potatoes very cold, like refrigerator cold. She took away our plates, microwaved them, and brought them back to us all stirred up and funky looking. I'm not convinced that I even got my own plate back. Management needs to step up their game: train, hire better employees, and put the failing employees on an...