Meta fires staff for 'using free meal vouchers to buy household goods'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I bet that was really worth it...
It isn’t clear that they fired the employees to send a message. From the article, it doesn’t look like Meta told other employees, “we fired people who abused the free meal service,” so I don’t know how others would get the message. Instead it was posted on Blind and picked up by news which seems like a poor way to send a message from a PR perspective.
did you not read the article?
the message was, quite reasonably, "don't take the fucking piss, if we give you food vouchers to buy your dinner, then use it for buying yourself dinner".
That's obviously not a serious question, so it doesn't deserve a response.
> if we give you food vouchers to buy your dinner, then use it for buying yourself dinner
I don't know whether there even is a "message", but if I worked for a company that just fired a bunch of people for discrepancies in really minor expense reports I would simply avoid submitting an expense report for something like a meal ever again. They're clearly looking for an excuse to fire people, and it's better to not make oneself a target.
Imagine if your boss has a stack of gift cards on their desk in case people need a taxi home, and some employees start using it as their personal expense fund.
If I was looking to fire someone, the thieves would be at the top of the list.
I guess the net result is the same? It seems accepting the digital voucher comes with a huge risk--what if they decide to object to the establishment or your food choice? So just.. bring a sandwich for lunch instead or pay with your own money...
EDIT: the important thing to remember as a U.S. employee is that--just like every interaction with the police is grounds for arrest--every interaction with your employer is grounds for dismissal. So minimize those interactions.
ANOTHER EDIT: which restaurants or food trucks accept these "digital vouchers"? Are these some kind of apple wallet type thing on your phone? So it only works at places with certain payment equipment? Many places I like to eat only take cash..
Some companies will have a app or web page where you can click to submit a request certifying that you are working late and request a meal voucher code. Sometimes there is an "I self certify I qualify and am following the rules.." checkbox
Using the code in the app sends the food bill and receipt to your company account, presumably with an identifier of who made the purchase.
>It seems accepting the digital voucher comes with a huge risk--what if they decide to object to the establishment or your food choice?
Seems like no risk to me, provided you are following the clear rules and aren't willfully scamming the system. I have never heard of a company objecting to a good faith food choice or establishment, and that doesnt seem to be the case here either.
That's genuinely interesting. I'd probably be so much happier in general if I was ever able to trust an employer's intentions that much. Experience has (repeatedly) taught me otherwise, though, so I fear that's not possible barring major changes in U.S. employment laws.
There are lots of areas where I dont trust employers, but following published expense policies is not one I lose sleep over.
I have never once had a problem, or heard of anyone else having a problem in real life. I have used corporate expenses for decades, and know tons of people doing the same across dozens of companies.
That said, I don't overtly steal from the company. I'm smart enough to realize people are touchy about that.
We've had broadly the same experience but drawn very different conclusions here. This is very interesting and I'll definitely think long and hard about it.
EDIT: I have had (accidentally) improperly reported expenses rejected before. That's normal procedure. It would be quite shocking if my employer instead just fired me... Albeit given U.S. employment law it would not be surprising
Is periodically firing employees not part of the process too?
If these people are habitually and willfully lying and stealing from the company for $20, what could that mean for the rest of their work and interactions.
Several thousand dollars of stolen meals is a bargain to identify these individuals and get them out of the company. Who knows what else they are stealing and lying about. opportunities about
Because if the employees were using some kind of non-monetary compensation that was allowed to be accepted in an uncontrolled manner that's a process problem. When they swiped their decoder ring or what the fuck ever it should have errored out.
> habitually and willfully lying and stealing
Prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and i'll listen.
24/70,000 employees seemed to have a problem with theft. The process worked for 99.97% of employees who weren't thieves abusing the system.
>Prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and i'll listen.
Not even the fired employees are contesting what they did. They are just saying they didnt think it was a big deal
This makes perfect sense. There is a difference between a good faith mistake, and intentional theft. I imagine your employer would be less forgiving if you fabricated your report or try to fly under the radar with personal purchases
What a sad and scared worldview. Interactions with your employer are also grounds for promotion, recognition, and advancement. Instead of hiding from life, you can engage with it. There are risks, but competent humans can asses those risks and proceed in a thoughtful way to achieve their goals.
>ANOTHER EDIT: which restaurants or food trucks accept these "digital vouchers"? Are these some kind of apple wallet type thing on your phone? So it only works at places with certain payment equipment? Many places I like to eat only take cash..
Per the article, they are codes you put in to apps like grubhub and ubereats. Yes, there are practical limitations on the perk. If you want to eat at a cash only place, you probably arent in the office working, and you can pay it out of your own pocket with your 400k Meta salary.
As a competent human, here's how I approach these risks. There's simply nothing an employer can possibly do to me that matters significantly. Firing is an opportunity--I can collect unemployment and apply to better jobs and probably get a raise. Failing that, I'm confident in my skills to survive and thrive in any north american climate and--with a small amount of luck and some learning curve--by extension just about anywhere else on the planet. So I'm not actually super worried about the worst case scenario. But I'm not super confident it won't happen, because to be so i'd have to trust employers which is a known mistake.
> grubhub and ubereats
Ah ok, i've never used apps like that. I'm probably not the demographic who'd be caught in this sting.
But that's worse, right? Okay, then the conclusion is that this basis doesn't work, and you need some leniency. Simply sticking to rules, especially if they're stupid, almost always backfires.
We have to do cost analysis. Is it really worth it spending 100,000+ dollars to rehire and knowledge transfer over a few bucks? Do we really want to set the precedent that we are anal dictators? What affects does that have on other employees in our company?
It's very tempting to be technically right, and then believe that means you can do whatever you want. I mean, you can, but as a company that can bite you. Being correct is not a hall pass from human perception. If you're an asshole, you will still be treated as such, regardless of how correct you may be. Naturally, I'm sure this move eroded much employer trust at Meta - almost all of it being in innocent employees. Collateral damage, but somehow, I doubt anybody sat down and did the cost analysis on if it's worth it.
Not really, having a hole in the rules doesn’t mean the rules should be loosened. I don’t even understand how you came to that conclusion.
The rule is „this credit is for you to buy food as a meal“. That means you shouldn’t order stuff to only take home and eat later, and it also means that you shouldn’t order stuff that’s not a meal. I don’t see why this is so hard to understand from the perspective of the employer. If the employer hands out fuel credits for the drive to work, would you say it’s fine to use that to drive to your holiday because hey, I could have used it to needlessly drive circles before coming to work, too, and that would have been even worse?
I think the meal credit thing is a simple concept and if you can’t follow the simple rules and have to order other stuff, you deserve to be fired. It’s not hard to understand.
From the employer standpoint it makes absolutely no difference if you got to a cheap place or an expensive place, because the rule is X amount. So you'd be stupid to go to a cheap place.
And the concept of having to eat it is stupid on the surface.
What happens if you get full, and you have to take some home? Are you now fired? No, right? But you broke the rules?
You require some amount of leniency. If you follow rules hard and fast, it will backfire. It also creates perverse incentives. Like I said, I'm incentivized to buy as much food as possible and as expensive as possible.
I agree some of these employees probably did deserve to be fired. I don't think Meta handled it well though, and I do think this ultimately hurts them orders of magnitude more than anyone else. Often, we justify self-destruction because we're right. Nobody really cares how right you are when you hurt yourself.
> The rule is „this credit is for you to buy food as a meal“.
You said:
> That's not what the rule is. The rule is you get X amount of money, maximally, to spend on a meal.
What’s the difference?
You would be stupid to go to a cheap place, so you are free to spend your credit on whatever food you want, as long as it’s your meal. If you don’t finish, you can take the rest, but even going somewhere and ordering stuff just to take home without eating anything is already technically not allowed. I don’t know if you seriously don’t understand the rule or if you’re just trying to argue.
Imagine if someone invited you to dinner and you order 10 plates and tell the waiter that you want to take the excess home. Is that fine because you were invited, so you can order whatever you want? You can’t tell me that you think ordering wine glasses and laundry detergent from your food credit is fine.
Only if you don't eat it yourself later ;)
Tax and legal implications can be worse than having to fire some people and formal warning showing you did something for others.
However, once an employee starts putting expenses that won't pass the smell test, it could threaten the perk.
Or have we just forgotten reasonableness? We can just... extrapolate anything to anything?
Imagine if your boss has a stack of gift cards on their desk in case people need a taxi home, and some employees start using it as their personal Amazon shopping.
The vouchers had a specific purpose.
If I was looking to fire someone, the thieves would be at the top of the list.
My assumption is that this is an excuse to get rid of some employees they didn't want anyway.
the message is that it didnt matter how much you're paid, you still are under our thumbs, and we can use any excuse to fire you.
A company isn't paying you X amount of money because it "values you", they pay you that because of the market forces that force them to pay you that amount of money. They'd gladly pay you nothing and crack a whip on your back if they could get away with it.
"Valuing you" is something your family will do, but rarely a company, especially a publicly traded one.
>be careful what message you want to send.
The message was exactly the one they wanted to send: "Everyone is expendable".
Do you imply the person didn't eat that day or what? The company compensates employees food expenses. The employee's partner made the food and thus the food can't be expended, so they bought something else at the equivalent price to compensate for what would otherwise be covered by the company.
I can't find a logic by which this is "stealing". Please clarify.
Now, it's not stealing. Does this outcome feel more morally correct to you? I think, if you answer "no", then your logic on how this stealing works is faulty.
But my logic is correct. If he had just spent it on food he didn't need, he would be in the clear. So then the conclusion must be the policy doesn't work.
The policy is very relevant, in fact it's the only relevant piece of information. You want to prevent stealing? Don't offer your employees stipends. Problem solved, I'll send everyone my invoice.
This is a simple case of having their cake and eating it too. You cannot simultaneously be "generous" and be stingy. Meta intends to keep a certain image, while they maintain actions that contradict that image.
> The company trusts employees to use benefits with responsibility
Correct, the company is being incredibly stupid and naive. They maintain a purely transactional relationship with their employees, and it's in their own best interest to keep that kind of relationship. Such a relationship is not, and will never be, one of "trust" or "morals". The company seemingly forgot what they are.
You're describing exactly the problem. The company wants to appear generous, but they're not actually generous. A generous person doesn't care if that food is meant to feed a family.
This hurts the employees, but it also hurts the company. Naturally this erodes trust. If I worked at Meta, I would be scared to submit an expense report.
It's the same reason a lot of companies have "unlimited PTO" but the employees are shivering in their boots when they take off. Because they don't trust their employer. This strategy works, kind of, but the long-term effects is the erosion of culture and inevitably performance.
Either be nice, or don't be. There's nothing wrong with not being nice - companies aren't people, they have no concept of morals. So who cares.
Well, it wasn't long before someone decided to just grab a few entire boxes of pizza and go home with them, abusing the perk so they could get a free meal for their family.
After a few times that happened, the pizza perk ended, because one guy ruined it for everyone.
Now we all know it was you!
EDIT: (sarcasm alert, I'm obviously not saying it was literally you, just someone with the same justifications)
Another way to solve the problem is to fire employees who abuse the perk.
1. You're bleeding money. Saving a buck or two because you fire someone who bought toothpaste is nothing compared to rehiring and knowledge transfer.
2. You're eroding trust. If I was an innocent and honest employee, I would now be scared to submit an expense report. Please, don't bother with "you have nothing to fear" bullshit. You see someone get fired for an expense mistake and naturally you don't think it's worth it for a 10 dollar meal. Same reason a ton of employees don't take time off.
In actuality, they made the problem much worse. Objectively. If their goal was to save money they absolutely aren't doing that.
Saving money ISNT the goal. If they caught an employee stealing $20 from another employee's purse, it it would be cheaper to simply reimburse the victim $20, but obviously there is more to it. You dont want to employ thieves and condone theft.
I gain literally nothing and waste my time?
I can't fathom how this makes sense unless the value you are trying to optimize is waste.
> Employees who had only occasionally broken the rules were reprimanded, but were able to keep their jobs, the newspaper reported.
It sounds like the fired employee’s abuse was especially egregious and most Meta employees doing this got off with a warning.
Bad companies do this. They are so conflict-avoidant they would rather end useful programs instead of addressing the few bad-apples.
Good on Meta.
So probably a perk they decided was worth it or necessary for morale at some point
Dayum, I could make a weeks worth of meals with the daily allowance of each of these.
They buy some startup, bring them all under Meta's HR umbrella with all the rules and perks that comes with. Since these recently acquired guys are running out of random offices in random places they just give them a stipend rather than force them to all relocate to a campus with dining.
The $400k employee was probably a higher up (or key SME Meta felt they needed to put in golden handcuffs) at one of these acquired companies and was probably already on his or her way out.
I always thought that stuff (along with the snacks) was a ploy to keep employees working longer hours. Needing to get food/coffee/whatever is a transition that can allow people to decide to disengage from work. A strategically placed coffee station can prevent a longer trip to the cafeteria or a coffee shop, and free food in the cafeteria can prevent a trip offsite to a restaurant or the worker's home for a meal. Plus it can seem like a plus to the employee, because people often pay a lot more attention to money than time.
I don't think it's that simple. Sure, on some level it's a win for you (free food) and a win for them (more time spent working), but on another level you might be winning more if the perk wasn't influencing your decision-making to take the employer-preferred path.
I think it's a little more clear when thinking about employer provided dinner, like Facebook apparently provides.
At some point it will disappear and go to a hard RTO, but for now it kind of works.
I've seen others ask how is buying toothpaste and wine is possible on a voucher, Doordash definitely does this "add groceries in the next 15 minutes!" thing once you've ordered lunch.
Should stealing be excused just because you're doing it to some wealthy entity?
The problem with the "it's OK to steal from them because they're in a position of privilege and I'm not" justification logic, is that then the poor/homeless guy around the block should also be ok to rob you or break into your car because "who cares, have you seen the fat wages those techies are raking in?"
Have Meta done a lot of nasty stuff that they should be punished for? Definitely. But that's another topic they need to be held accountable for by the law, and should never be a justification to green light stealing since two wrongs don't make a right and you don't want to live in a society where stealing is normalized as long as you think you're doing it to someone more priviledged than you.
Funny bit is no one ever seems to want to contemplate how to defang the power laws that yield winner takes all, fostering massive inequality at the expense of the majority of the population.
That'd make being rich harder though. No one wants that.
It is basically lying on an expense report.
They were given permission to use funds to dinner if they were working late. Instead they treated the program as a personal credit card.
Absolutely!
> The problem with the "it's OK to steal from them because they're in a position of privilege and I'm not" justification logic, is that then the poor/homeless guy around the block should also be ok to rob you or break into your car because "who cares, have you seen the fat wages those techies are raking in?"
False equivalence. But also, I'm absolutely ok with this.
> Have Meta done a lot of nasty stuff that they should be punished for? Definitely. But that's another topic they need to be held accountable for by the law, and should never be a justification to green light stealing since two wrongs don't make a right and you don't want to live in a society where stealing is normalized as long as you think you're doing it to someone more priviledged than you.
I'm completely fine with this world.
Hilariously, you could have made this argument a lot better by indicating perception of privilege is subjective. But you didn't—and instead only produced examples that should be ok to anyone with an ounce of morality.
Employers should not be exercising control over how compensation is used. Period.
The employees were stealing from the company coffee jar
That said, it's compensation employees accepted with conditions in its use, and to intentionally violate those conditions is not ethically supportable.
Work meals are not W-2 taxable compensation if they meet several conditions, such as being consumed outside normal working hours and on premises.
A gift card to buy food or whatever you want is w-2 taxable income. A meal voucher so people can eat while working late is not.
https://www.henssler.com/employer-provided-meals-are-they-ta...
My impression is that's created a deeply rooted sense of need. That sense of need stays, even when you clearly have great salaries.
Doing that also gives you freedom in the sense that you are no longer "trapped" in whatever job you have, because you can develop a long enough runway that you can leave a job before you've found a replacement.
[1] In my youth, I dated the daughter of one of the richest people in my city. I asked him what the key to getting rich is, and his response was "spend less than you earn". At the time, I thought it was a way to to avoid answering my question, but in the decades since I've realized that was actually the correct answer and everything else is just expanding on that.
I'd wonder if that was part of the issue here, actually; are these sorts of meal vouchers treated specially for tax in the US?
This facebook example by contrast is hilarious bean counting partnering with moronic principles.
And where is the quote from the person that bought toothpaste at the request of a homeless person? I'd like to be in the HR office for that conversation.
If they had an engineering job that solves problems, they'll probably be OK.
…maybe Zuck is exempt though? (https://www.15minutebusinessbooks.com/blog/2019/07/26/you-ca...)
Either give someone $20 or don’t. Then you don’t have to have an entire investigative department devoted to auditing whether an item has caloric value or not.
You wouldn't say the same thing about a company credit card.
The natural aristocrats are unaffected, not because they get away with abusing the system, but because they don't abuse them.
One has to be remarkably pathetic and morally bankrupt to abuse this in the first place. Meta is simply correcting their mistake of hiring a fundamentally unqualified peasant.
The rich and powerful are simply much better at breaking the rules without getting caught, that's how they're rich, while the poor are usually not, that's why they stay poor.
It's also undisputably false, unless you exclude all the people that don't adhere to your thesis. But at that point, you're just grasping at straws and cannot admit to being wrong.
I.e. P Diddy as a very notorious recent example that was both rich and effectively powerful (how else would he have gotten away with it for decades) and has now crashed. The inverse exists as well, where people publicly commit crimes and get away with it, just because they can. Very frequent for politicians for example, I don't think you need specific examples for that?
Now, let's assume, as you suggest, that I'm wrong and Meta has fired a true natural elite for abusing company perks. If that's the case, Meta's failure is obvious. However, if they really were elite, and Meta valued them accordingly, the abuse would be irrelevant. Elite performance forgives small transgressions—always has, always will.
My examples addressed FirmwareBurner, who made a very different argument
But trying anything like that here is "socialism".
Meta provides a $25 meal delivery credit for employees in offices that do not serve catered dinner. It is valid only within a specific time window on weekdays, and meals can only be delivered to the office.
The offense here is that employees were ordering items other than food, or not actually working at the time of delivery. Like they would order food to the office, go in to grab it, and then leave.
Meta's behavior seems quite justified here.
> The company had also reportedly become more stringent on office supplies including staplers and tape, with staff having to borrow items from their reception desks instead.
I’m sure Google can compute the cost of a $400,000/- a year employee traipsing down the hallway to borrow a stapler. Pretty sure the stapler will pay for itself in a few trips.
Well it wasn’t pennies. HR filtered to find those who claimed thousands and then managed to prove many of them were ordering on days they hadn’t even swiped into the office. Anyway, when HR finally did look into it dozens of people got fired from their $n00,000 job for stealing $5,000 worth of food. Good to fire them, you don’t want to hire people that stupid.
I've seen people empty drink refrigerators into duffle bags before the weekend.
There was a guy who took dozens of travel-sized deodorants from the bathroom and kept them in his desk (and still didn't use them...)
There was someone who would pressure the cafeteria staff for 10 "to-go" meal containers.
All highly-paid engineers. Money doesn't buy class
Yes. This is called fraud. Even if you feel mega corp X is bad, defrauding mega corp X is… also bad.
It is no different than using my company expense card to book a family trip to Hawaii.
To me, that feels like a much worse outcome, not a better one. I think this demonstrates you need some leniency in these things. Because pettiness breeds pettiness.
If it's wrong to use it on a tube of toothpaste because that's stealing, then it must surely be right to instead buy the maximum food and throw it away. Therefore, people should do that.
If that sounds wrong to you, then the initial assumption might not be correct. Maybe it's not so bad to buy the tube of toothpaste.
Constraining yourself to extremely hard and fast rules seems like a good idea on the surface. But it's all about incentives. I can easily make the company bleed much more money while being within their rules. So why even bother?
A touch of leniency and common sense goes a long way.
That makes no sense, One does not imply the other
I have a business card with a limit of $5k for buying work materials. I might get forgiveness if the materials ended up being wasted. That doesn't mean it acceptable to use my business card to go to Disneyland, or that it is "Right" to use it for wasteful purchases.
Zero sympathy for thieves
> Zero sympathy for thieves
I often find that those who process information in such absolute ways are typically simple-minded. I can come up with infinite examples where thievery is not only excused, but the most moral choice.
There are much better ways Meta should have gone through this. And, ultimately, I put the blame on them for coming up with an exploitable and naive policy.
I dont see how Meta has any moral obligation to prevent exploit. They should all have more such policies and monitor them to better weed out thieves.
>I can come up with infinite examples where thievery is not only excused, but the most moral choice.
Can you explain the moral justification for someone with a 400k salary to steal from their employer?
Right, and clear lines are reactionary and emotional, in my opinion.
> I dont see how Meta has any moral obligation to prevent exploit
They don't, companies have no moral obligations to do anything because it's impossible for them to have morals, because they aren't people. Which is why I never give companies the benefit of the doubt - that's reserved for entities capable of morality, in my mind.
> Can you explain the moral justification for someone with a 400k salary to steal from their employer
Sure. There's a young boy dying of a rare illness. The employee cannot make or buy the drug, but he knows a company has access to it. They refuse to give it up. So he steals the drug, saving the young boys life. Saving a life is more important than keeping the drug, therefore the situation is moral.
Or imagine a company is evil in some way, and theft might prevent them from doing something evil. Again, moral. This is also the rationale behind why killing is sometimes moral. If I'm about to get killed and I defend myself, I therefore killed to prevent something evil happening.
If a bunch of members of the Nazi party stole and fled the country, we wouldn't have had a holocaust. If Oppenheimer stole the secrets to the atomic bomb, hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians wouldn't have been killed. If someone stole the guns from the Columbian killers, that tragedy would've never happened.
I'm not saying that theft is morally justified in this particular circumstance. What I am saying is that generally it could be. And Meta handled this in a piss poor way that hurts them much more than the employees.
Really, I'm looking out for Meta. So, you're welcome Mr. Zuckerburg.
I was asking about this circumstance. It seemed like you were making the case that in this case it isn't bad, sorry if I was confused, and you agree it is bad.
The IRS doesn’t view it that way — if people were just given an extra $70 a day for expenses not related to their job, it would typically to be taxed as compensation.
If they allowed this to happen unchecked and lots of people started doing it, the headline would be “Meta facilitates tax avoidance scheme for employees making $400k”
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000...
The relevant section is on De Minimis Meals.
"Abuse" of perks and expense reports are the first place you look. It's an easy, terminable offense.