Customer leaves drive-thru without paying because employee is 'taking too long.' AITA?

Patience is a virtue because it's difficult to maintain it during the stressful hustle and bustle of everyday life. If patience was abundantly easy, the world would be a far more chill place than it is now.

One of the hardest times to be patient is when you're hungry and all the cylinders in your brain are screaming at you about how you need to get food in your body ASAP. Listening to that internal screaming, instead of breathing and taking the patient route can lead to some rash decisions.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, the OP asked if they were wrong for driving off from Wendys before the worker was done processing their payment.

They wrote:

AITA for driving off without paying for my food?

I went to Wendy’s tonight because it was hot and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I went through the drive-through and used Apple Pay to buy my food. I got to the second window, they handed me my food, and as I was putting my frosty in the cup holder the employee asked if I could stay put for a moment.

I was waiting as he was listening in his headset and I was very confused as I already had my food and just wanted to go home to eat it. After about a minute he turned and said they weren’t sure if my payment went through so I needed to wait until they figured it out. So I waited while he disappeared.

Nobody came to tell me what was going on so after about 3-4 min I decided to just drive away. I was hungry and tired and just wanted to have my frosty before it melted. I checked Apple Pay and no charge went through so I feel a little bad for just driving off.

People did not hold back.

ShowUsYaNungas wrote:

YTA. There was doubt around if you'd paid and you left - without paying. Could have checked your Apple Pay while waiting too.

Being hot and not having eaten all day isn't the merchant's fault.

MidwestIceCreamKing wrote:

I am a manager at a Wendy's. I see a lot of y t a votes here, but it really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. Consider it a freebie for the crappy service.

hauntedfruit wrote:

They could’ve been training someone new or having system issues. Sounds like they wanted to be sure before potentially overcharging you, 5 minutes also really isn’t all that long. YTA.

LegitimateControl924 wrote:

Surprised at the amount of people saying y t a. Five minutes sitting in a drive thru is low-key crazy since you already had your food. If you wanna be a nice guy you can explain the situation next time and offer to pay but NTA for driving off.

I work in a chain restaurant as a manager and if my system was messed up not taking payments and I already gave them their food I’d never ask them to sit while it rebooted. Don’t feel bad, if you read the comments you’ll see that everyone that actually works in a restaurant says you’re good lol.

justanotherfleshsuit wrote:

NTA. Jesus Christ it's a f**king Wendy's. Y'all need to get off all your high horses and give the dude a break. Do you know how much food we steal at the end of the night or better yet, how much food is wasted at the end of the night?

Millions of dollars worth of food gets thrown out at fast food places all the time because it's closing shifts and the companies would rather cut it as a loss than give it away or give it to a homeless shelter. My manager at Dunkin got in trouble from corporate for bringing food meant to be thrown out to a local shelter. F**k those companies. Enjoy your food.

yellowcat_vs_redcat wrote:

Um. Yes YTA. You literally stole the food. You didn’t even wait 5 minutes! You could have eaten in the car while you were waiting. If you didn’t want to do that and your frosty melted (which it wouldn’t in 5 min) you could have asked for a new one and I’m sure they’d accommodate you. This is completely on you. YTA.

Clearly, the judgements are divided between people who have worked fast food jobs and think OP is NTA, and people who haven't and think OP is a thieving AH.