Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, reportedly fired 24 workers in Los Angeles for using their $25 meal vouchers to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses, the Guardian reports.
The £1,2 trillion technology company, which also owns messaging platform WhatsApp, reportedly sacked workers last week after an investigation found employees were abusing the system, including sending food home when they were not in the office.
That included one worker making $400.000 a year who said she used meal vouchers to buy household items and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.
On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, she wrote: "On days when I wouldn't eat in the office, like when my husband is cooking or when I'm having dinner with friends, I thought I shouldn't throw away a dinner voucher."
The worker admitted wrongdoing when contacted as part of a human resources investigation into the practice and was later fired. "It was almost unreal that this was happening," she wrote, as quoted by Financial Time, which first reported the story.
Some employees were also found to have spent the vouchers on other household items, such as acne pads. Employees who only occasionally broke the rules were reprimanded, but were able to keep their jobs, the newspaper reported.
Free food has long been one of the perks of working in large technology companies.
Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, typically feeds employees for free in the canteens of its larger offices, including its sprawling headquarters in Silicon Valley.
However, those in smaller offices receive daily vouchers to order food through delivery services such as UberEats and Grubhub. Daily allowances include $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch and $25 for dinner.
The company sparked an employee revolt in 2022 after it decided to delay its daily free dinner at its Silicon Valley campus by half an hour until 18:30 p.m. as part of broader cost-cutting. This meant that fewer employees would eat on campus if they managed to catch the last shuttle leaving the site at 18:00 p.m. It also made it difficult for employees to get free takeaways.
Other big tech companies have also started reducing employee perks. Last year, Google began reducing fitness classes and the frequency of laptop replacements. The company also reportedly became stricter about office supplies, including staples and tape, with employees having to borrow items from the front desk.
Meta made the decision to sack employees it accuses of abusing their privileges last week as its bosses launched a new restructuring plan that will see staff fired and redeployed from its WhatsApp and Instagram divisions, as well as its "augmented reality" division, Reality Labs.
The company has just come off a major layoff, with Zuckerberg ordering 21.000 layoffs in 2022 and 2023. Meta had around 70.799 employees at the end of June this year.
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