Meta Fires Employees Over “Using Free Meal Vouchers to Purchase Home Goods” | Meta

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly fired about 24 employees at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 meal credit to purchase items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses.

The technology company, which is worth £1.2 trillion and also owns messaging platform WhatsApp, was said to have fired staff last week after an investigation found employees had abused the system, including to send food home when they weren’t in the office.

They included an unnamed worker earning $400,000 (£308,070) who said he used his food credit to buy household goods and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.

On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, they wrote: “On days when I didn’t eat at the office, like when my husband was cooking or I was having dinner with friends, I thought I shouldn’t waste the meal credit.”

The employee admitted the violation when approached as part of a human resources investigation into the practice and was later fired. “It was almost surreal that this was happening,” the person wrote, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.

It was discovered that some employees had also spent the credits on other household items such as acne pads. Employees who only occasionally broke the rules were reprimanded but were allowed to keep their jobs, the newspaper reported.

Free food has long been one of the perks of working for big tech companies.

Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, typically feeds its employees free from the cafeterias of its larger offices, including its sprawling headquarters in Silicon Valley.

But those in smaller locations get daily credits for ordering food through delivery services like UberEats and Grubhub. The daily allowance includes $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch and $25 for dinner.

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In 2022, the company caused uproar among staff after it decided to delay daily free dinner service at its Silicon Valley campus by half an hour to 6:30 p.m. as part of broader cuts. That meant fewer employees would be eating on campus when they caught the last shuttle that left the campus at 6 p.m. It also became more difficult for employees to stock up on free food to take home as leftovers.

Meta has been contacted for comment.