Tales from the Red Lobster shrimp debacle

“I had a guy come in with his family. It was a family of five. And he did 16 rounds of shrimp scampi,” said James Berke, a 23-year-old in New Jersey, who until very recently worked at a Red Lobster. “He was there for over two hours on a busy Friday night. They had one of my biggest tables. I just had to watch this man eat plates upon plates of the scampi, which isn’t even served over pasta. It’s shrimp in a garlic-wine butter. It was so gross.”

There was also the fact that when parties arrived at Red Lobster looking to pig out on a bargeful of shrimp, they simply wouldn’t leave. Berke’s experience serving a man who put away 16 servings over the course of two hours was actually mild compared with some of the other stories I’ve heard. Josie, 19, who also asked to be anonymous, worked at a (now-shuttered) Kansas City Red Lobster, where she watched a solo diner take down 30 orders of fried shrimp within four hours. According to the nutritional information on Red Lobster’s website, that’s something like 14,000 calories.
You had groups coming in expecting to feed their whole family with one order of endless shrimp,” Josie said. “I would get screamed at.” She already had her share of Cheddar Bay Biscuit battle stories, but the shrimp was something else: “It tops any customer service experience I’ve had. Some people are just a different type of stupid, and they all wander into Red Lobster.”

Durrant said he once spent between three and four hours in the dining room, downing 83 shrimp in total, and took “at least one nap” at the table.

“I am bummed that Red Lobster is going away,” Durrant said. “But I get it. There’s not really anything on the menu worth getting other than the Endless Shrimp.”