Olive Garden Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Worcester

Terrible. Went to this Olive Garden on Sunday, 4/10/22 @ 7:30pm. Walked in with my wife and my 7 month old son to see the employees at the front desk chatting away with a group of girls who were talking about scheduling, I believe one of the girls was an employee who was off that day. The front desk employees noticed me and caught my eye, and blatantly ignored me. They continued to chat with this group of girls and continued ignoring me until I stepped up to the front desk and made eye contact with the employees. One of the employees finally acknowledged me and said “Are you picking up?” My response was “no I’d like a table for two and a baby.” She didn’t respond and looked down at her desk, murmuring in the other employee’s ear. After a few minutes I impatiently asked again. “So can I get a table?” Then she said, “We have a two and a half hour wait.” I said ok then we left.

We left and called the restaurant to test if the employees at the front desk were being truthful about the wait time. When I got on the phone with an employee on the phone, I asked, “Do you currently have a wait time?” The employee on the phone then seemed to ask one of her coworkers if there was a wait time. Then she answered my question. “We have about an hour wait.” I told them that was fine and asked to be put in a waitlist. So my wife, my son and I were out on a waitlist in which we would be texted by phone when our table was ready. I put my name down as Phil, and received a text message saying, “Olive Garden - Worcester: Thanks for joining the waitlist. Please arrive on time and check in with the host when you arrive. We will hold your spot for 10 minutes past your estimated arrival time.” So we waited a full hour.

After an hour, we still hadn’t received a text from the number in which I had originally received a text message from the restaurant, so we drove back to see if the table was ready. When I walked in, there were several employees at the front desk, seemingly doing nothing but wasting time. I asked them if my table was ready. One of the hosts told me that there was an hour wait. I told them I called over an hour ago and spoke to an employee who told me it was about an hour wait. The host immediately tried denying this until I shortly interrupted her and told them I had called and put my name under as Phil at 7:44pm. It was now after 8:44pm, that hour had long since passed. One of the hosts started looking through some terminal and her fellow hosts, “We don’t have anyone with that name down.” I preceded to raise my voice in frustration telling the hosts that my wife, my son and I had been waiting over an hour for a table in which we were told that we were out on the waitlist. Then one host said in a low voice, “We have another hour wait, we only have two servers on right now.” I looked at all of the hosts with my mouth dropped to the floor in shock that they just outright told me after waiting an hour, there was an additional one hour wait. That’s when we turned and walked out the door, and one of the hosts actually had the audacity to say, “Have a good night.”

Never coming back here will be telling everybody not to go either. There are plenty of Italian restaurants in Worcester who take their jobs seriously.

The hosts in question should be subject to reprimanding, retraining or termination. They took far to long to acknowledge us, too busy chatting with their coworker and her friends, and when they finally did acknowledge us, they took additional time to awkwardly tell us that there was a wait. On calling them, the host who answered the phone gave us inaccurate wait time estimates, and never texted us back through the waitlist messaging system. Upon returning, the several hosts at the front desk (About Seven) should have more easily been able to answer my questions. Instead they looked around at each other, and one even attempted the rude ordeal of trying to deny my statements and essentially accuse me of lying. Some of those 7 hosts should have began serving customers.

Management should be terminated outright for...

This is by far the absolute worst Olive Garden location in the entire world! Started from entry when we stated that we need a table for 2. The host studies the seating sheet for a good couple minutes before deciding where we sit. Then we walk to the table and are seated. I look around and notice the table is dirty with what appears to picked off fingernails on the table. I informed the waitress, whom wiped the table as we were sitting there, rather than simply moving us to the clean table available next to us?! I did not mention the dirty seat or the absolutely disgusting floor that contained the previous patrons fork, sugar packets and some food that dropped. We ordered our food immediately so we could get started on the never ending pasta bowl promotion that was being offered. I informed the waitress of the promotion, as she seemed to be unfamiliar with it!?? We asked for soup and salad, because it came with the promotion. These came out pretty quickly, surprisingly. We consumed this and even ordered more salad and another soup. Finally after eating soup and salad for an hour I had to stop, hoping for my main course to arrive. Finally they bring the pasta bowls, now that I'm pretty full on soup and salad. I ordered another one immediately because I knew it would be eternity before I recieved it. They did not disappoint as I sat and waited and waited and waited for me refill. Finally it arrived and the sausage appeared to undercooked. I ate it anyway. Got bill and noticed I was charged 9.99 for endless soup and salad. When questioned the waitress tried to justify the charge, until I showed her the sign on the table, explaining the promotion. Took the 9.99 off but then after I paid, I realized I was charged 3.99 and 1.99 for the refill of the meats which was attempted justification from tge waitress but also supposed to be included in the promotion. Couldn't get my money back because I already paid? But got a dessert, which they were out of 80 percent of. The sad thing about this whole ordeal was there was actually plenty of help here, they were just too interested in hanging out in the back rather than take care...

Unfortunately, this system forces you to give at least one star instead of none which is what I'd like to rate my experience today.

Since it was father's day I went on line and put our name on the wait list so we wouldn't have to wait too long. When we arrived I informed them I was on the wait list and was told because it wasn't busy it didn't matter. We were ushered to a table and told someone would be with us shortly. About five minutes went by and no wait staff had come by. Finally a waitress noticed we had been there for a while and asked us if someone had already taken care of us. We said no and she told us someone would be with us shortly. A waitress finally came, apologized for the delay and took our orders. Delivery of the salad and bread sticks took a few minutes. 30 minutes later our food still hadn't been served and when I asked the waitress what the hold up was she apologized and stated the cook had messed up our order. Guests who had arrived after us had already been served and almost done with their meal. The food was served 45 minutes later. However, two of the dishes were cold and didn't even look appetizing. The waitress couldn't apologize enough and informed the manager who immediately came to our table, apologized and asked how he could rectify the poor service we had received. I informed him there was nothing he could do as our fathers day afternoon had already been spoiled. He informed us we would not be charged for the meal. My only regret is that my son-in-law was so looking forward to his first time at the Olive Garden and it turned out to be a total fiasco.

Since we were unable to eat at the Olive Garden due to the poor service and we were still hungry, I called Blue Jean's Pizza and ordered a delicious pizza for us. By the way, their service was excellent! I would definitely give...