Holy lunch-lineapocalypse! Lines are snaking out the door and around the block at dozens of takeout joints across the District. Have they all decided to start selling $15 lobster rolls? No — it’s just today’s LivingSocial “instant deal” promotion, which has downtown office dwellers abuzz.

The group discount buying website partnered with local eateries to sell between $10 and $20 worth of their food to customers between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. today for just a buck. The deals went live this morning, and the website went through spats of being temporarily down as the masses descended on the coupons. With forty-five minutes left, the deals are now largely sold out. And by and large, lines are massive.

For the most part, sit-down restaurants participating in the promotion seem slammed as well. (If you have a coupon but no reservation, you might want to get on that now.) Table service restaurants that don’t easily accept reservations — for example, the Indian restaurants and sports bars that aren’t on Open Table — reportedly have similarly large lines and wait times. Luckily for those that bought but don’t want to brave the crowds, LivingSocial is refunding the whole dollar of coupons that aren’t redeemed. And while there’s been a lot of chatter lately about whether these deals are actually good for businesses, restaurants aren’t going away empty-handed. LivingSocial is kicking up at least part of the expense for participating restaurants in promoting the Instant Deals, though they wouldn’t tell us exactly how much.

Share your tales from the lunchtime trenches in the comments.