Meta has recently let go of 24 of its employees from its Los Angeles office, not because it found a new AI model that could do their jobs in a much more efficient way, but because these employees reportedly were misusing their daily meal credits to buy things other than breakfast, lunch or dinner. Daily meal credits were used to purchase non-food items like toothpaste, and laundry detergent and some even used the credits for buying wine glasses.
A Perk gone wrong
One of the sacked employees with a CTC of $400,000 which is roughly about ₹3.32 crore in India, used the meal credits to buy household items. One employee allegedly went to on a popular anonymous chat app called ‘Blind’ and wrote, “I figured I shouldn’t let the dinner credit go to waste.” When HR approached the workers about the situation, they came clean about using the credits to buy things outside the intended purpose.
So what are the Daily Meal Credits worth?
Well, at Meta, the staff is usually given free food from canteens at the larger office sites, meanwhile, employees at the smaller sites get daily credits of $20 to $25 per meal for them to order from food delivery apps like UberEats and Grubhub.
Meta is not the only Tech giant cracking down on these free meal perks, Google is facing a similar problem and has cut back on perks like fitness classes and now requires employees to check out office stationary supplies like staplers at the front desk.
Meta has also pushed back its free dinner service for employees by 30 minutes at its main campus. This apparently was enough to stop many employees from grabbing a free dinner before catching their ride home.
Seems like tech companies are slowly dialing back on the extras, one meal credit at a time.
