it says you have to be in the country, when you make the application. With your travel ticket back into Thailand you can prove you were in country of embassy when you applied.
It’s fine mate, if and when you’re approved essentially do a boarder run, on re-entry show them your dtv there shouldn’t be any issues with that, you can even prove with your current flight ticket that you were in US when you applied for the visa. No harm done 👍
you’re genuinely just making assumptions mate, of course there’s a no refund policy the responsibility is on the applicant to get things right. Small errors = no visa = more money from re applications.
No judgement from me, this is how the world works 💰