Oh hey it’s Valentine’s weekend, isn’t everyone so excited? Everyone is posting pictures on social media and going out with their significant others. Then there is the other side of single men and women that are like “who cares about Valentine’s day” blah blah. There’s a small portion of people, that low key are excited about Valentine’s day, but don’t celebrate very much. That is me.

Now, with that being said this year Valentine’s day is on a Sunday and who the heck is going to be able to enjoy that? Well come on, that’s outrageous. With that being said, Eric’s parents wanted to take the Romo boys to dinner at their favorite spot, Chili’s. You know what that means for mom and dad, yes, date night or at least dinner alone!

After going through a list of what we do and don’t want to eat, we decided on Italian. Mmmm, Italian means Olive Garden. Who doesn’t love Olive Garden! As we sat down, I already felt a weird vibe from the waitress.

The waitress was sweet and before I rant about how it wasn’t so great let me go on the good parts. The waitress had a larger table and then us. I have never been in the food service industry, but Eric was. With that being said, we try to be as understanding as possible.

Now, she took awhile to get our drinks, but that’s okay because we were chatting about what we wanted to eat. Once we ordered food, our drinks came. Yay for Sangrias and Bellinis! We continued our chat while waiting on our food. When the salad and bread sticks came there was no water in our glasses. And she never came to refill. Someone else brought out our dinner and we were pleased! It was delicious. But, I had to drink my entire alcoholic beverage because there was no water. There was no water!!! What the heck, what is dinner without water! In between that we also asked for more bread sticks that came AFTER our food was devoured. Are you noticing the pattern? When she finally came back she asked about dessert, but it was too late, I was done with dinner. I love going to Olive Garden for dessert. They make amazing Zeppolis that I wasn’t going to have. Eric knew how disappointed I was. That was when he had to intervene.

After calling the manager to our table, Eric expressed how we hardly ever go out without the kids and we were celebrating our Valentine’s early, etc. etc. He let the manager know that we weren’t upset, more disappointed that this happened (especially being such a great restaurant). Of course, the manager, his name was Mike, apologized repeatedly and encouraged us to have a dessert on him. We were full, and ready to go, but he wouldn’t let  us take no for an answer. We informed him that we didn’t want that, we were more than happy to come back, but he couldn’t let our night end the way it did. Zeppoli’s it was.

The dessert came, followed by the check, which to our surprise had Eric’s meal taken off. What in the world? We were shocked. This was the kindest gesture and we were so grateful. How often does a manager accept our criticism and comp a meal, uh never. Mike had made our night, this was definitely a story I had to share. I paid our bill and even tipped our waitress. I’m a sucker for people in the food service industry (even when they don’t deserve it).

Mike came by one last time to make sure that our dessert was good. He even chatted with us and spoke about his family and how he understood because he has kids and work that get in the way of “date nights”. As we got up to leave, Mike slipped us a receipt with a gift card. Mike knew we were perplexed and told us he wanted to make sure we would come back. I kindly declined and said we would be back and he didn’t have to do this. It was more than enough that he gave us a dessert and Eric’s meal free. Mike insisted. Because Olive Garden is over a $4 billion dollar company, Mike said it was the least he could do.

Overjoyed and oh so grateful for what Mike did for us, we left the restaurant full of chatter about how much it meant that Mike listened to us. He was willing to go way over the extra mile to ensure a happy customer. The waitress wasn’t fired, just talked to about how they could have helped her be a better server. We didn’t want anything bad to happen so we made sure she knew that it wasn’t her fault, we knew it was a busy night. All in all, I HAD to make sure this hit the net. I have to get the word out on how AMAZING Mike is. He is a dedicated manager at Olive Garden and we only wish him the best in his life.

Thank you Mike for making our Valentine’s weekend the best one yet.