The waiter had to ask twice. “I’m sorry, miss, you want eight orders of mozzarella sticks?” Not eight sticks. Eight full plates. A man who posts as @christiancooks99 says that was the moment he knew how his first date was going to end, though even he could not have predicted that it would finish with the two of them grabbing fried cheese off the same platter like toddlers fighting over toys.
Christian, as he introduces himself in the story, says he matched with the woman on Hinge and they texted for about five days before he asked her out. He picked a local, casual American restaurant, “kind of like a Chili’s, Applebee’s, but local and a little bit nicer,” and offered to pick her up. She said no, she would come straight from work.
They agreed on 7 o’clock. He admits he rolled in three minutes late. She arrived at 7:15, told him she was there when she was not, and he waited by the door another five minutes before watching her pull in. “I should have just told her, hey, let’s reschedule, but I didn’t,” he says. “I was hungry.”
Forty Mozzarella Sticks and a Very Patient Waiter
Once they sat down, the conversation actually picked up. She liked golf, she was excited for the Bears game that weekend, and she enjoyed action movies. “Pretty much everything that I was trying to hear, she was saying,” he says.
Then came the appetizer. He suggested splitting nachos. She preferred mozzarella sticks, then ordered eight orders of them, plus a whole cheese and pepperoni pizza. The waiter looked at him, and he just let it happen. At $14 an order, he figures it came to $112 in mozzarella sticks alone, about 40 sticks in total.
They finished the first plate together. She finished the second. Then she called the waiter over and announced the rest were cold. The waiter gently pointed out that 40 mozzarella sticks for two people would naturally cool after sitting for ten minutes, and offered to put them back in the fryer. She refused, saying that would overcook them. What she wanted was for the restaurant to comp six orders.
When the waiter said he could not do that, she asked for a manager. While they waited, she turned to Christian, expecting backup. He told her he was not paying for eight orders of mozzarella sticks. She explained that she had planned to take the rest home anyway. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll get them for free.”
The Manager Stayed Polite and the Night Fell Apart
The manager arrived and explained, calmly and courteously, that the kitchen had cleared out both fryers to cook all those sticks at once, and that everything had gone out hot. He offered to warm them again. She said no. He then offered to take the six orders off the bill, as long as they also came off the table. She asked for a to-go box. The manager said if she was going to eat them or take them home, she would have to pay for them.
That was when Christian stepped in, apologized, and asked the manager to just take them away. She accused him of siding with the manager, and warned that if he would not let them enjoy appetizers, she could not imagine what he would do when the entrees came out. He decided to leave and asked for the check.
He handed over his card without looking. That was a mistake. The bill included all eight orders of mozzarella sticks, the pizza, and his burger, which the staff kindly boxed up along with her pizza. So, on principle, he started loading the remaining sticks into his to-go box. She did the same. “It looked like we were two hungry hippos,” he says, as she yelled at him to stop touching the mozzarella sticks she had ordered and he shot back that he had paid for them.
As they wrestled over the last of the fried cheese, she told him it was the worst date of her life. He had to laugh, he says, because somehow it was not even his.
@christiancooks99
First Date Lessons Worth Passing Along
Whether you are back in the dating world yourself or you have a grown child or grandchild swiping on apps, this story has a few lessons tucked inside the marinara.
Order like a guest. On a first date, especially when someone else may be paying, choose reasonably and share appetizers. Ordering far more than you can eat with plans to take it home tends to send the wrong message.
Food that cools is not defective food. Restaurants will usually fix a dish that came out cold, undercooked, or wrong. But a plate that sat on the table for ten minutes is not the kitchen’s fault, and asking for it to be free while also keeping it is not a fair request.
Talk about the check early. A simple “I’d love to treat you” or “Should we split it?” settles things before the menus come out.
Always look at the bill before you sign. Mistakes and misunderstandings happen, and once you pay, sorting it out gets harder.
Know it is okay to leave. Running late once is human, but going silent, being rude to servers, or making demands are signals worth taking seriously. A polite “I don’t think this is a match, but I wish you well” is a perfectly good way to end a date early.
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