Who could have ordered $1,000 worth of Grubhub orders? Six year old Mason.
Unbeknownst to his father in Chesterfield, Mich., the boy had placed $1,000 worth of Grubhub orders from several local restaurants when he let him use his phone to play a game before bed.
“Why did you do this?” Stonehouse, who was the only parent at home at the time, asked her son, who was hiding under his covers.
“I don’t know,” Mason replied. “I was hungry.”
All Mason wanted to know as his father was in the middle of reprimanding him was if the pepperoni pizzas had arrived yet. (The pizzas didn’t make it. Stonehouse’s bank rejected the $439 order, deeming it fraud, the 43-year-old father told The Washington Post.)
“I had to keep going out [his] room and calm down,” Stonehouse said. “You want to yell at your son, but he’s only 6.”
Stonehouse and his wife waited until the next morning to have the “real talk” with Mason, Stonehouse said. Both explained that he had essentially stolen from his father and that he had to pay for some of the hot dogs, chili cheese fries, jumbo shrimp and ice cream with the $150 he had in his piggy bank, Stonehouse told The Post.
“We showed him one by one,” Stonehouse said. “He was a little heartbroken, but he understood.”
Fortunately, the food did not go to waste, Stonehouse said. The family invited other relatives for dinner. A neighbor offered to buy all the jumbo shrimp orders. And they still eat leftovers for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Stonehouse said.
However, Mason has not been allowed to eat any of it. “We didn’t want to glorify this to him,” Stonehouse said. “This is not a funny thing.”
Maybe not for at least a decade. The family has joked about buying the exact order for Mason’s graduation party or wedding reception, Stonehouse said.
For now, the child is still struggling with the consequences of his actions.
“Shall I begin [my piggy bank] all over again?” Mason recently asked his father.
“Yes, Mason,” Stonehouse replied. “Sometimes in life, when you make a mistake, you have to start over.”
