If you order food at a restaurant and receive something you didn’t order, is it wrong to send it back?
What if your significant other works there?
A diner turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for feedback.
Training-Buyer2625 asked:
“AITA for ‘causing a scene’ at my boyfriend’s work?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“So, I (22, female) and my boyfriend (23, male) were going for a dinner in a restaurant that he works at as a pastry chef. I ordered a Caesar tortilla (a wrap is called this in my country), and, after 45 minutes of waiting, received a Caesar salad.”
“I said to him that’s not what I have ordered, and he told me to wait, and that he will go to the kitchen and make me a tortilla.”
“After a few minutes, he came back with the plate. It was just the previously made salad stuffed in the tortilla (the croutons from the salad were inside).”
“I told him that I am not going to eat that, because that is not what I ordered. He told me that that’s basically the same thing and that I should just eat it.”
“But, it’s not the same thing. I especially wanted the tortilla because of the crispy bacon and the cheese that melts inside, but in the salad there are just thin slices of cold cheese that I don’t even like the taste of.”
“He told me that the kitchen will close soon (when I ordered it was 9pm, kitchen closes at 11, and the restaurant at 12) and that I should just eat it (because I was complaining for the last 3-4 hours that I am starving).”
“I told him that that is not the point, and that we can just go somewhere else to eat. He ended up telling his colleague (the waitress) to take it off the bill, and we went to a fast food place to eat.”
“He ended up being mad because I caused a scene and made him ashamed in front of his colleagues. Mind you, I am the quiet type, so I had just told him that I won’t eat that, and then he talked to his colleague. Soo…”
“Am I the a**hole for not just eating something that I didn’t order?”
The OP later added:
“It went down like this: I told the waitress, ‘Excuse me, but I ordered the tortilla.’ She seemed annoyed, but said, ‘Oh, okay, we will make it’.”
“My boyfriend then told me to wait and went down to the kitchen to make me a tortilla. When he came back with the dish, I told him that I do not wanna eat the same salad stuffed in a tortilla, but that it is not important anymore, that we can just go anywhere else to eat (in a normal tone, I really wasn’t mad, just hungry).”
“He told me, ‘Just eat it.’ I refused because I don’t like Caesar salad, I just like the wrap. He then called the waitress and told her to take it off the bill. We left, and I ate somewhere else.”
“He told me later that I have embarrassed him, because him telling his colleague to take it off the bill is ‘causing a scene’.”
“That’s the whole story. He had been working there for a few months. He got the job because my dad’s good friend is the co-owner.”
The OP summed up why they might be the a**hole in their situation.
“I asked my boyfriend to return the salad I didn’t order. He says I embarrassed him at work.”
Redditors weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- INFO – more information needed
Redditors decided the OP was not the a**hole (NTA).
“NTA. And he shouldn’t have gone into the kitchen himself to remake it (especially given his thing is pastry). Mixups happen in restaurants and they know how to handle them.”
“All you have to do is say something like ‘I’m sorry, there seems to have been a mixup, I ordered ABC and this is XYZ.’ The server would have taken it back and brought out the correct thing and everybody would have forgotten about it five minutes later.”
“Seems like your boyfriend was so obsessed with you not making a scene that he ended up making one himself.” ~ macaroniinapan
“This is so weird to me. If I had a family member in the hospital where I worked, and their meds were late or something, I wouldn’t go to the Pyxis machine and pull their meds myself, even though my badge and credentials would likely give me access to those things.”
“How weird is it for a chef in street clothes to go back to the kitchen and make anything whatsoever? Kinda gross, to be honest.” ~ rileyjw90
“If somebody who’s not on the shift came up to my station and just started making themselves something (while it seems like they’re pretty busy considering the wait) I would absolutely tell them to get the f*ck out of the kitchen.” ~ CallSignIceMan
“That was the weirdest part. You’re not working, stop trying to show off or whatever the hell that was about and get out of the damn kitchen.” ~ badmammajamma521
“To be honest, I see this as a reflection on how OP’s boyfriend thinks about OP. When you’re at work, you would see this as a customer service interaction – ‘Oh sh*t, we gave them the wrong thing. Now we will make the right thing’.”
“They might be annoyed (even though OP did nothing wrong to ask for why they ordered), but they’re not super emotionally attached to it, and know objectively those are two different items.”
“OP’s boyfriend seems to have viewed this emotionally, and personally. He thought, ‘why can’t she just go along and eat this since the ingredients are similar’, and seemed to be motivated to go remake it himself specfically so he could prove to her these items are exactly the same and it was ridiculous for her to request the correct item.”
“Yeah, they’re basically the same thing if you go out of your way to shove the ingredients of one item into a tortilla and call it the other. Your finger is on the scale there.”
“If she’d have eaten it, the conversation probably would have later been ‘You made that huge deal out of it, but guess what – you literally just ate the exact same salad but wrapped in a tortilla!!’ laughs smugly at performing the perfect gotcha on his dumb girlfriend (I don’t think she’s dumb).”
“This sounds like a person who regularly undermines his partner and doesn’t really like her, but maybe it’s a one-off more related to his feelings of insecurity in that kitchen. Maybe he’s generally not well-liked back there, because as others have said, when your coworkers love you, they usually go out of their way to make the most bomb-a** version of a dish of your loved ones when they come to visit.” ~ robotatomica
“I work in a restaurant. If a significant other/friend/family member of someone who works here were to come, it would be the highest priority to get them the food right and on time. It’s like a VIP customer.”
“I don’t think you are the AH, especially if you pay for what you order just as everyone else. Maybe the culture where he works ia a bit more ‘toxic’ than what I think is right, and that’s what really makes him uncomfortable, but not in any way did you do anything wrong here. NTA.” ~ Quiet-Plankton-7237
“OP’s boyfriend doesn’t seem to like OP very much. There’s a reason they say that contempt is basically the end of a relationship. This is how you end up being treated when contempt creeps in.”
“The fact that the waitress said they’d remake the order and OP’s boyfriend got up and went to the kitchen himself to stuff the wrong salad into a tortilla is crazy work. Absolutely zero respect for her.”
“He literally cares more about the opinions of his coworkers than making sure his girlfriend gets fed a meal she actually enjoys and making sure that she is happy and full. Let alone a meal that they are seemingly paying for!”
“I’m not normally an ‘immediately break up’ kind of Redditor, but this was an act of absolute and total disrespect by the boyfriend for literally no reason because the waitress already agreed to fix it. There’s no way to read this situation that doesn’t involve OP’s boyfriend disrespecting her.” ~ TheDoorInTheDark
“NTA – It always shocks me when restaurant staff get upset when you insist that you get what they are going to ask you to pay for. This could have been avoided if the restaurant simply provided adequate service and the correct item.”
“Him stepping in to make it ‘right’ didn’t help things at all. I’m guessing he didn’t want to be ‘that customer’ at a restaurant in which he works.”
“Having years of experience in the past in food service, I found out fast that it’s never a great idea to patronize the place you work.” ~ Thundernutz79
OP might want to reflect on their relationship. Was this situation an outlier or par for the course?