Meta fires employees for using $25 meal allowance on wine, household items

The dismissed employees pooled their credits together to maximise their purchases, taking advantage of the meal credit system over an extended period

In a surprise development, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly dismissed around two dozen employees in Los Angeles for ‘misusing’ their $25 daily meal credits provided by the company, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Instead of using the credits for meals, as intended, some employees allegedly purchased items such as wine glasses, laundry detergent, and acne pads. These dismissals took place just days before Meta announced a restructuring of its teams, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs.

This situation reflects a rising concern within the tech industry over employee misconduct and misuse of company resources, FT said. The report mentioned the terminated employees had been taking advantage of the meal credit system over an extended period. Some pooled their credits together to maximise their purchases, while others had meals delivered to their homes, despite the credits being intended for use in the office.

Employees who only occasionally violated the policy were reprimanded, but those found to have repeatedly or seriously abused it faced termination.

In an anonymous post on the platform Blind, a former Meta employee admitted to using the $25 credits for items like toothpaste and tea. They explained that on days they didn’t eat at the office, they felt the credits would otherwise go to waste. Despite admitting this during an internal investigation, they were unexpectedly dismissed. The employee, who claimed to earn a salary of around $400,000, expressed disbelief at the situation.

Restructuring of teams at Meta

Meta provides daily meal allowances of $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $25 for dinner, with credits issued in $25 increments. The terminations occurred shortly before the company, valued at $1.5 trillion, began restructuring several teams, including those at WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs.

The restructuring involve staff cuts and relocations, continuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to improve operational efficiency. Like many tech companies, Meta offers free meals at its Silicon Valley headquarters. For employees in smaller offices, meal credits are provided for services like Uber Eats or Grubhub.

The bizarre layoffs come at a time when several tech companies across the world laying off thousands of employees. Layoffs in major IT companies have risen by 15 per cent in 2023 over the previous year. More than 1,150 tech companies fired over 260,000 people in 2023, according to data from Layoffs.fyi.

In July 2024, the tech sector experienced continued layoff trends, resulting in over 8,000 job losses across 34 tech companies. This rose the total number of layoffs for the year 2024 to 124,517 across 384 companies worldwide.