About 20 years ago I was in a Golden Corral in Charlotte where I thought this was going to happen over butterfly shrimp.
We very rarely went out to dinner and had never been to a Golden Corral at that point, but heard the advertisement on the radio that they had a butterfly shrimp thing going on. We decided to splurge and do it.
It was packed, and it was a fairly rough crowd, and everyone was mobbing up at the buffet. And the restaurant was filling up the tray with literally six butterfly shrimp at a time. They'd get scooped up by one person and everyone else would be agitated for 15 minutes waiting for another six shrimp. Eventually, there was a lot of yelling and pushing, but it didn't break into a fight at least before I got out of there.
I sincerely thought there was going to be a riot, it was legitimately one of the more tense situations I've been in, it went from humorous to pretty scary in a short time. Especially being there with some little kids.
All in all, I'm not a Golden Corral hater. It serves a purpose, especially when you have kids. The ability for them to have whatever they want and to not have to wait to have your order taken and then get the check is a huge godsend on road trips with kids. We used to eat there fairly frequently back in the day, and they were usually fine.
I'll still hit one once or twice a year. The steaks have gotten terrible over the last 10 years, I wouldn't touch one, but there's stuff that's decent. The fried chicken is excellent, and the salad bar is always super fresh and good in my experience. There's usually a few other things that are fine, it's an ok place to get a quick-ish meal without having to go fast food.
