A manager at an Olive Garden in Indiana is out of a job after fulfilling a customer's request to avoid being waited on by a nonwhite server.
"She asked for a server that wasn't black and the manager complied," hostess Amira Donahue told a local news outlet about the unidentified diner, who visited the Evansville location this past Saturday. Donahue, who is also black, added that the customer also told her she "should go work at a strip club instead of an Olive Garden," and asked her, "Am I even black? Am I from here? Am I from America?"
A customer who was at the eatery that night also tweeted, "A few white people come in and say that they refuse service from a 'colored' server and asks to speak with the manager. The manager without hesitation ensures that they will not receive service from a person of color. That couple should’ve been refused service for even asking something like that!!"
Olive Garden has since said in a statement, "We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, and the manager involved no longer works for our company." Meanwhile, the Evansville NAACP says it has not received a formal complaint, but it is also investigating. "They have a very diverse staff, a very diverse clientele. I go there myself," says NAACP President Reverend Gerald Arnold. "So we have to investigate all those things."