'AITA for refusing to pay in full for a meal someone else took home from the restaurant?' UPDATED
"AITA for refusing to pay in full for a meal someone else took home?"
I (20F) went out for dinner with a friend (20F) and her boyfriend (20M). By accident I ordered a dish that I couldn’t eat (this was my fault). When it came time to grab the bill my friend and her boyfriend asked if they could take my meal which was barely touched.
I said sure since I wasn’t going to eat it and it would be a waste otherwise. A couple days later her boyfriend reached out asking me to pay for my portion which included the food they brought home.
This caught me by surprise since again, they were the ones who ended up eating it all and it felt like being asked to pay for part of their meal. If they hadn’t done that I would have paid in full since it was my mistake for ordering the dish. I explained this to him and asked if they could recalculate the total. Her bf said he understood and gave me the new split, which ended up being 20 dollars less.
I paid the remaining ($10) but it seems like afterwards they weren’t very happy and have since refused to hang out. This is the first time something like this has happened and there have been times where I have covered the meal without really caring if I got the money back just because I wanted to hang out. Since we were already growing distant in our relationship I kind of just let it be.
When I brought it up in passing today a different friend said she disagreed with my actions and claimed that they were helping me by not wasting my food. To be honest I still don’t really see how this was helping me as either way I wasn’t eating it. I also think that by taking the food it was a choice they made that they should be accountable for. Again if they didn’t take the food I would have paid for it.
This feels like if someone ate your food and still asked you to pay for it. It’s not something I would do to anyone else and I don’t think it was wrong of me to voice my objection considering how the bf even said he understood. That being said, I feel bad at how the friendship fell apart over some dollars. AITA? Should I have just paid the full meal?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
I've read your post and most of your comments. I'm not sure why you posted here. I think you thought people would side with you, but alas, the majority believe YTA and I agree. There absolutely is a social norm here and with or without nuance or historical perspective, you made the mistake, weren't going to eat it so they took it. Your mistake, their gain.
I didn’t particularly think anything when I posted this I genuinely wanted to see what the other opinion was. Because framing it as “doing me a favor” felt incredibly inaccurate. This is maybe the only comment I’ve read that I think is fair point that my mistake was their gain. And I can understand not going to dinner expecting to buy two meals.
I especially think thats the case for larger groups where there are more leftovers. But it wasn’t a large group, and they also knew immediately I couldn’t eat it. There wasn’t an offer to share some of their own meals or let me have more of the dishes we intended to split.
Like you don’t go into dinner expecting to buy the leftovers, no one goes to dinner and expects to eat nothing and pay for someone else to eat. I already paid the $10. But I am certainly not apologizing to them because they chose to eat my food.
prairiescary wrote:
NTA. I’m going against the grain for a couple of reasons. First, this should have been settled at the table when the bill came, not them asking you days later for more money. Second, I am imaging this happening with my friends. The bill comes and I go to pay for my share; my friends would never let me pay for the food that I didn’t eat and they were taking home.
Beautiful-Way-2259 wrote:
YTA. And how you don't see that amazes me. Of course you had to pay for it. You ordered it, you made the mistake so you couldn't eat. They asked to take it and you agreed. If they knew they had to pay for it why would they ask?
Gdobbs13 wrote:
YTA - you ordered the dinner and made a choice not to eat it (the reason why does not matter). You could have asked to take it home to give to someone else. You didn’t do that so presumably, the food would have gone to waste. Your friend is simply not wasting food that you didn’t want. You order it, you pay for it.
After reading the comments OP posted this edit:
Edit: Thank you all for your perspective. To be honest it hasn’t changed mine. Some points being touted as objective irritate me so I am just writing this and logging off. This isn’t a black and white situation where I ordered food and demanded someone else pay for it just because I didn’t want to pay. It was a request I made for fairness, ONLY BECAUSE they ate the entire dish.
If the situation were they ate all of it at the restaurant because they saw I wasn’t going to touch it would that change the situation somehow? Because the end result is the same and I don’t believe most people would have been okay with that.
I view the ordering as a mistake on my behalf but not something they were paying for in a that they would never have ordered the meal and this was burdensome on them. No one forced them to take the food, they wanted it.
I did not want it to go to waste. That is why when they asked for it I allowed them to take it. I didn’t stomp my foot and say “No leave it I want it trashed!” I would just have to find someone to give it to otherwise. No I would not have then made that person then pay it would have just been a kind gesture if they wanted the food.
Free food is free food, I also think calling a complete dish where I only tasted a spoonful and realized it contained an ingredient I couldn’t eat “leftovers” feels like an extreme exaggeration.
And I have a hard time believing that most people commenting don’t somehow see that aspect of it. And in this case it was my decision to tell them I actually didn’t want them to have a free meal on me. It’s not my obligation to pay for someone else’s meal and you may disagree, that is how I see it since they were the ones eating it.
Regardless of if they ordered it or not, they wanted it enough to take it home. If it were truly disgusting and inedible I am fairly confident they would not have touched it. So I’m hard pressed to believe they didn’t realize they were getting a meals worth of food out of it or that they didn’t expect it would be free.
Normally whoever is taking home the leftovers isn’t taking the entire meal back with them. And this should have broken the standard considerations.
The comments have dived into more speculative attacks on my personality which is fine. I find it odd that people have to invent scenarios and additional traits. The new split that they calculated was $10. Is they wanted more to cover that spoonful that would have been fine with me too.
The point of this post was for me to understand what the other side might have been thinking and the best I can arrive at is there was cause for them to ask me for the money, but I still cannot see that as a “fair” request.