Dating Disasters·
THE MEAL TRADE
A first date in a restaurant orbiting around a mysterious box and a questionable barter plan tests honesty as a date-turned-business encounter spirals toward an awkward debt dispute.
Should she pay for half the meal?
Be one of the first to vote.
He showed up to a first date with a box in his hands, vanished for 15 minutes, then later asked the woman to pay him back for half a meal he never actually paid cash for.
The date started in a restaurant parking lot, where the man met the poster carrying a medium-sized box. When asked what was inside, he brushed it off as "work related" and said the restaurant owners were clients of his. He told the poster he was a salesman for something, and then promptly disappeared.
While the poster was being seated, he was gone for about 15 minutes, leaving the date to sit alone and wonder why he had turned dinner into a work stop. By the time he returned, the awkward start had already set the tone. He still wasn't ready to order for another 30 minutes at the table, and the poster had already been there for 45 minutes without ordering anything but water.
Then the conversation turned to the box.
He admitted he was trading goods for free meals at the restaurant. According to him, if the goods he was selling were worth $100 retail, the restaurant would give him a meal of equal value, even though the actual costs were lower for both sides. The poster later clarified the mystery item in the box: "There was nothing shady in the box. It was ink cartridges."
They ate dinner, but the poster had already decided the connection wasn't there. The meal exchange was one thing; the bigger issue was that the date just wasn't clicking.
The next day, the poster sent a text saying exactly that: "I didn't feel a spark, and I would not be seeing him again."
That's when the ask came.
He replied that "I owed him money for my half of the meal." He added that "it was customary if a woman decides it's a 1 time thing to have paid for her own meal." The poster said they could sort of agree with that in general, but in this case he had not actually paid for the meal at all.
That detail mattered because the restaurant hadn't even brought a bill.
The poster's question was simple: "AITA for not paying for my meal, when the restaurant didn't even bring us a bill?"