To the Editor:
I am wondering who the real Karen is in the case of the Karen at the Olive Garden. I can’t help but sympathize with the couple who were seated at the bar, in the middle of eating, and being interrupted and asked to move to accommodate a couple who arrived after they did, and seem entitled to sit together, no matter the circumstances.
Does the lady who wrote that letter know what happened before they arrived there? The other couple may have been moved once, already, to accommodate someone else. Or, after arriving at the restaurant and being told of a 40-minute wait, decided to eat at the bar. Either way, interrupting someone in the middle of eating so your husband does not have to stand, in my opinion, is wrong.
If you are in the dining room, would you ask another couple to switch tables with you so your husband can look out the window, and call them Karens when they did not do so?
The bottom line is, you arrived at the restaurant with no reservation, at a busy time of the day. You elected to go to the bar to wait, knowing there may not be any seats at the bar (a situation my wife and I have encountered many times at the Bonefish on 466). When we encounter a situation like this, I have my wife sit, and I stand behind her, and appreciate the fact that the place is busy and we managed to get one seat, and leave the other seat for someone else. I have found that if someone is just having a drink waiting for a table, they will volunteer to move, but we would never ask someone in the middle of eating to move.
In other words, suck it up. (And no, we are not the couple this lady described. Olive Garden is not one of the places we frequent, which is not a comment on the product they deliver.)
Vincent Lipert
Stonecrest
