Olive Garden: American flag display would disrupt dining experience.

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• I worked at an OG for 4 days once and I can assure you, the only thing worse than eating at a Darden restaurant is working for one. Crack whores probably have a higher rate of job satisfaction.

• Olive Garden is proof that multiculturalism is destroying this country. This the USA not some generic country some people want. No more of my money is going to Olive Garden unless they truly show they will welcome the flag in all their eating areas. An apology and lame explanation of their current multiculturalism position is not enough.

• I'm so hungry now..... Damn.

• Drudge has posted a piece saying that the American flag is now welcome.

  • Aw, too bad! Unding the dong! They'll have to feed me for free each time I go if they want my business, which is of course not what their business is. They can dump it.

• I would really like to have seen this play out with some sort of Muslim type of banner, or one in Arabic, or whatever.

  Would OG have acted the same way?

  Doubtful. Guess some people are more equal than others.

• I've eaten my last meals at Olive Garden and Red Lobster. In case you didn't know, they are owned by the same parent company.

  There are many more patriotic restaurants to select from. This is the USA and if you come here from some where else, you should expect to see the American Flag being displayed in all kinds of places. What a bunch of weak kneed pukes.

• May get thumbed down for this, but Olive Garden HAS issued an apology. They do not have a chain-wide policy with regard to flags and banners. Some misinformation was allowed to gather steam. The location in question did not have a private banquet room--which the manager of the restaurant should have informed the Kiwanis group of when they booked the facility--and the corporate office has since cleared up the matter and made an apology.

  Of course, the Kiwanis group was right to take their business elsewhere; that's the American way. Vote with your wallet. But I'm not sure this is worth a boycott over if they've done the right thing and apologized for the misunderstanding.

  Knuckling under to Mooch over the menu items in exchange for an Obamacare waiver..yeah, that's worth a boycott.

  • For that matter, the group when they were booking, if not informed that there was no private dining room facility, should have asked. Yeah, they should have been told, but they weren't, which put the ball back in their court.

    For the record, I'm all for flying the flag whenever and wherever. Logic tells you that a typical standing flagpole takes up less space than a human being, BUT if there was no private space to hold the banquet, I guess the restaurant didn't want to take the chance of employees or patrons tripping over the flagpole.

• They apologized. Makes me wonder if their e-mail got bombarded along with their phone lines. http://goo.gl/Yf1IL

  • Isn't that big of them? Can they step off the land mine once they've stepped on it? Un-ring the bell, as it were?

• It's always entertaining to watch far righters start waxing indignant and threatening boycotts over a triviality. The triviality being, of course, that Olive Garden doesn't wish patrons to clutter up the public dining area with a lot of banners and signs.

  If it was important to Kiwanis to display these things (and the U.S. flag), then obviously they should have rented a private dining area. But, as usual, the plastic patriots come swarming, ready to hate and disdain any private business that dares to have regulations that THEY don't approve of. ;)

  • Olivia
    STFOOMA

  • Sorry Ollie, once again you are wrong. Having attended, and set up, many of these kind of dinners for the American Legion I can say that Olive Garden was wrong in this instance. Because you have to pay for the reserved area, private or not, the restaurant should have told the Kiwanis Club their rules before hand. They then could have made arrangements at another dining establishment instead of finding out at the last moment.

    • They didn't have rules per se; the issue was that there was no private dining room and therefore no private space to set up flags and banners. Which, as it's been said, they should have been informed of at the time of booking, and any restaurant manager with a modicum of experience should have known that.

      As far as I can tell, what happened is that they got ready to set up for the banquet, an employee told them they couldn't set up the flags, and it snowballed from there.

      Disclaimer: I have no interest in Olive Garden beyond their white chocolate raspberry cheesecake.

      • I wonder what they would have said if an Islamic group had reserved a space, then wanted to put up some kind of banner?

        • "Ah yes of course, you are most welcome my friends from the religion of peace" Cowardly, PC, wimps.

        • Well, they don't want any beheadings in front of the restaurant, do they? Bad for business.

        • They would have tucked their tail between their legs like a beaten dog and sucked ass any way they could.

        • Probably one of two things:
          Option one: Kept quite and let them hang the banner

          Option two: Refused and braced for a lawsuit.

    • Hey whiskey, do you think the Kiwanis will make the mistake of going back to the Olive Garden?

      • Lol, I doubt it. Being a member of our local Kiwanis club, the American Legion, V.F.W., and the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and thanks to the wonderful world wide web I am spreading the word.

        The Darden chain of restaurants may find it hard to attract small meetings like this in the future. God, guns and guts made our country the greatest the world has ever known and we proudly fly our flag.

• I've had my last meal there--a LONG time ago. I'd rather look at Old Glory than their crappy wallpaper.

  • Yes Teri, good to see your smiling face again.

  • Well now, long time no see Teri Newman! You gotta check out therightplanet.com and see what we are doing over there!

    And you are right, although I would rather eat their crappy wallpaper than the stuff they call food.