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Comment by legostormtroopr | Hacker News Reader

Sure, there are strong environmental and ethical reasons against eating meat.

But do we really want to applaud companies dictating what their employees do in their down time?

Keep in mind this policy covers travel expenses, so if you have to travel for work, you must eat the vegetarian option while traveling or you will pay out of pocket. Even if the only vegetarian option is fries, which is not uncommon.

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They're not dictating what employees can do on their own time, only what they can use company resources for. You can always find a restaurant with good vegan/veg options, although its admittedly harder in europe.

So you fly away from your family to spend the night closing a deal for your employer and after a long day of meetings you sit down and have to order tofu because the latest Richard Hendricks of the hour started dating a vegan. Fuck this whole idea and fuck WeWork.

The purpose of expensing meals is to compensate employees for the greatly increased cost of eating that is imposed by travel taking them away from their normal food storage and preparation facilities. It shouldn't be regarded as using company resources to purchase food. It should be treated as a form of employee compensation.

Would you be so understanding of this rule if it was the other way around? If you were only able to expense meals including meat, and vegetarian options were carefully excluded at WeWork events?

I was a vegetarian for years and it fell apart when I spent 6 months as a music tour manager. When you are on the road you need to work with what's available. I support being vegetarian and even encouraging this among employees somehow, but maybe there's a way that's more considerate and practical.

First off, I think this is a bad business decision.

But

>Even if the only vegetarian option is fries, which is not uncommon.

Is not true in my experience.

I'm a vegetarian and I only very rarely have problems finding something to eat at restaurants, and not fries, I don't even like fries. Though sometimes I have to ask for substitutions.

I admit, if you are not actually open to eating non-meat products you'd have issues.

There are also strong environmental and ethical reasons against eating soy and other mass-produced crops in lieu of meat.

The best ethical option is to eat organic foods grown/reared by yourself or someone close by, but that option doesn't scale so well in our current economy.

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