When you’re waiting to eat, there’s a limit to how long most people will wait.

So, what would you do if you were seated at a restaurant and after an hour and a half, you still didn’t have your drinks or your food? Would you continue waiting it out quietly? Or would you get up and try to leave?

In the following story, a group of friends deals with this exact situation and tries to leave. Here’s what happened next.

AITA for asking for the manager?

I (23), with my 3 friends (ages 22-23), decided to have dinner at a restaurant in a mall that specialised in Southeast Asian cuisine. It is a franchise-type restaurant, so we basically know what they are serving.

We entered the restaurant just after 8 pm. The waiter led us to the table and took our order in just 10 minutes.

Initially, everything was fine. We order what’s on the menu without adding anything or asking for much, just as it’s listed. The waiter said the food will probably arrive in 15-20 minutes.

They waited patiently for an hour.

To us, it is a reasonable amount of time to wait, judging from the customers they have (not many to be called full or packed, but not considered empty either; there are 5 other tables preoccupied).

We wait for the first 30 minutes. Neither our food nor our drinks arrived at our table. We give them the benefit of the doubt; maybe they are busy, or there is some issue in the kitchen, which we completely understand. We all have experience working part-time at restaurants before.

However, after an hour of waiting, we are getting irritated with the service. We call one of the staff and ask, and they say the food will be in a few minutes.

After another thirty minutes, they started to walk out.

We are getting angry and hungry after an hour and a half of waiting. It is already 9:35 pm. We decided to walk out of the restaurant since all of us had had it. We walk to the cash register to tell the cashier to cancel our order. They look stunned, and we explain the situation.

The conversation goes as follows:

Me: “We’ve been waiting about 1 and a half hours for our food that didn’t arrive. We wanna cancel our order and get going.”

The cashier wasn’t getting it.

Cashier: “Mister, you still have to pay for the food you ordered.”

We are in shock. I had had enough of this because, at this point, I’m hungry and angry.

I reply, “What food? Did you see us eat our food that arrived at our table? We didn’t get any food or drinks at all.”

Then, another worker joined in.

For some reason, the cashier has a hard time comprehending this and says, “You can’t just walk out without paying.”

This goes back a fore a few times until another worker comes in. We try to explain, but the cashier cut us off, “They don’t wanna pay for what they have ordered.”

The worker looks at us. Up and down. Then they open their mouth with a loud voice. “You guys can’t come over here and eat without paying. If you don’t have money, don’t order food in the first place. Don’t cause a scene like this and just pay up.”

At this point, all they wanted to do was leave.

The loud voice caught the attention of the other customers. We receive many stares as if we are in the wrong. I had it. “Call your manager or whoever is in charge, and let’s review the security camera. We are not paying for what we don’t get.”

Their manager comes in, and this time we explain before the workers say anything.

After that, the manager apologized and asked if we wanted to pack our food or anything. By now, we just wanted to leave the premises, and we did. But there are many glares toward us, looking at us like we are a bunch of bratty youngsters.

AITA?

Wow! That situation is enough to irritate most customers.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit would’ve done in this same situation.

This person thinks the whole thing was weird.

Here’s a reader who’s on his side.

According to this comment, he should make a formal complaint.

For this person, the situation is not okay.

He did the right thing because that would be embarrassing!

Let’s hope those employees were reprimanded properly.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.