Peckish delivery driver busted eating customer’s food before delivering their incomplete meal

The worker seemed to get hungry midway through her job, delivering a meal containing one less bao bun than it started with.

A family was left short-changed over the weekend after their food delivery driver helped themselves to part of their meal.

The delivery worker, named Monica, seemed to get peckish on her journey from Asian Fusion restaurant Junk Maroochydore, on the Queensland Sunshine Coast, to customer Andrew’s house on Saturday evening.

When the delivery arrived, staples holding the paper bag together had been ripped open, and a bao bun had been removed.

Andrew, who opted to use his first name only, said he contacted the restaurant about the issue, and a staff member confirmed there should have been two buns in the container.

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One bao bun was nicked from this container by a delivery driver. Picture: Supplied

While there was still plenty of food left to feed the family-of-four, Andrew said it was disturbing that a stranger busted the package open and potentially contaminated it.

“To me the issue was more that she was handling our food so who knows if she dipped a finger in the curry or grabbed a handful of rice,” he told news.com.au.

“Especially with Covid around we were reluctant to eat it.”

They ultimately decided to cut their losses and enjoy the remaining parts of the meal.

“Eventually we convinced ourselves that the risk was low but we won’t be using any of those services again,” Andrew said.

He took to Facebook to warn others about his family’s experience, saying, “if she’s brazen enough to go through and steal food who knows what else she may do to the food”.

Many others shared their own horror stories of delivery workers getting stuck into the food they were meant to be delivering.

“We had a guy open all of our bags and steal chips, drinks and a burger from Grill’d. The restaurant were so pissed and the manager (I think) drove us new food himself and a voucher,” one person wrote in a comment.

The delivery worker busted open the bag and helped herself. Picture: Supplied

Someone else argued the family should have taken a harsher stance.

“I’d have thrown it all in the bin. Meant to contactless and some grub has put their hands in your food to steal some. The driver is a thief and a grub. Instant dismissal,” they wrote.

“That’s actually disgusting, what the hell is wrong with people,” someone else said.

Some took an empathetic approach, suggesting the worker perhaps could afford to buy food for herself.

“Poor woman must have been hungry,” one wrote.

“She is genuinely hungry and is working her butt off but still can’t afford the food everyone else has delivered to their door,” another said.

Andrew said he had no plan to pursue the matter with the delivery service, as he was convinced “those delivery services don’t care”.

Restaurant staff however were “really apologetic and said to mention it next time I’m there and they’d throw some free food my way”.

“It definitely wasn’t their fault.”