Bottom-feeder Appreciation Week

It is a stroke of marketing genious and a nightmare for BOH staff. It's "restaurant week" and it's coming soon to a reality near you. The premise is fantastic: a state, county, city or other locale dedicates seven days to offer diners prix fixe dining at participating restaurants, usually sponsored by a local publication. Customers get to experience the cuisine of establishments that they otherwise could not afford or would not patronize and the restaurants get free advertising as well as the opportunity to expose themselves to a slew of potential new clients. Sounds great in theory, right?
I have worked restaurant weeks past as both a server and a chef and it is a hassle from start to finish. Seven days of bad tips, continual weeds, stress and one crabby, burned out staff when all is said and done. None of the reptilian, water-drinking lowlifes that kept the place over capacity all week will be back until the next year. The regular patrons who butter your bread the other fifty-one weeks of the year stay far away or resent you. The punchline is that the local rag sends every staff member who can spell out to post critiques of the participating establishments and, for obvious reasons, the reviews are less than stellar. I even know of a server who was let go because of some seriously critical feedback posted about the blogger's dining experience. I think the author was a sportswriter. Nice.