Mehta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, reportedly fired about 24 staff members at its Los Angeles office for using $25 meal credits to buy things like toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses. .
The tech company, which has a market capitalization of £1.2 trillion and also owns the messaging platform WhatsApp, last week after an investigation found it had been abusing the system by sending food to employees' homes when they were not in the office. The employee is said to have been fired.
They included an unnamed worker with a salary of $400,000 (about £308,070) who said he used meal credits to buy household items such as toothpaste and tea, as well as groceries.
On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, they wrote: “I thought I shouldn't waste my dinner credit on days when I don't eat at the office, like when my husband is cooking or when I'm having dinner with friends.”
The worker admitted the violation when approached as part of an HR investigation into the practice and was later fired. “It was almost surreal that this was happening,” the person wrote, according to the Financial Times. Who first reported the story?
Some employees were also found to have spent their credits on other household items, such as acne pads. The newspaper said an employee who only occasionally broke the rules was disciplined but allowed to continue working.
Free food has long been one of the perks of working at a big tech company.
Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, typically provides free meals in the cafeterias of large offices, including its sprawling Silicon Valley headquarters.
But employees at smaller sites are given daily credits to order food through delivery services like UberEats and Grubhub. Daily allowance includes $20 breakfast, $25 lunch, and $25 dinner.
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In 2022, the company decided to delay daily free dinner service at its Silicon Valley campus by 30 minutes to 6:30 p.m. as part of broader cuts, sparking an uproar among employees. This meant fewer employees would be able to eat on campus if they managed to catch the last shuttle leaving the site at 6 p.m. It also became difficult to stock up on free food for employees to take home as leftovers.
We have reached out to Meta for comment.
