Last night Basil and I realized we had a free and quiet Friday night tonight… no plans, no obligations, no work to catch up on… *?blink?* …. What the heck should we do? The soon-to-be-found, somewhat-obvious answer of course was: what else but Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster!? Now, this may not sound that exciting to you, but whenever that commercial comes on TV announcing this fine limited-time offer, Basil yells out, “ooooh yeah!!” and I know that our next date night is going to be about filling our faces with endless rounds of 4-5 different preparations of our little shellfish friends.

Our other option was to head out to all-you-can-eat sushi, but how can you resist round after round of Teriyaki Grilled Shrimp… Cajun Shrimp… Garlic Shrimp Scampi… Hand-Breaded Shrimp… Coconut Shrimp Bites…

Sure, go ahead and poo-poo our date night choice, but this is our fourth time going (Endless Shrimp marks the number of years Basil and I have been together) and now it’s practically a ritual.

I was searching online for information on this promotion and found this rant from a Red Lobster employee. It seems the ENDLESS SHRIMP campaign (getting more and more excited as I think about it) is perhaps not as exciting to the employees as it is to us greedy b’s:

“Endless Shrimp means 20 stops at the table of 3 construction guys who are each trying to eat 120 shrimp. Endless Shrimp means lower ticket prices, because who wants appetizers when you are going to try and rupture your spleen with your engorged stomach while eating limitless shrimp? Endless Shrimp means slower table turns, because you just have to find room for another round of Scampi. Endless Shrimp means cleaning shrimp tails from every nook and cranny of the restaurant (Sir, we do provide plates for you to put those on. Oh I see, you’d rather place them on the window sill, you can count them all there.). Endless Shrimp means those families you frequently find camping out at Old Country Buffet waddle over to our stores. Endless Shrimp means dealing with dirt bags who think endless means they can take home as many as they want. Endless Shrimp means repeatedly answering the question “What’s the mosstanybody’s ate up in here?” (Often answered while customer is on 5th round of scampi with butter drooling down their chin and pooling onto their shirt. Judging by the state of said shirt, that appears to be a normal eating practice.) Endless Shrimp means whole inbred families with poor hygene wearing sweatpants (look ma…they’s stretchy!) visiting me every day. Endless Shrimp means corporate Red Lobster makes their money, while the server gets screwed. For two months. Every shift.”

Now where are my stretchy sweatpants….