Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, reportedly fired about 24 employees at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 meal credits to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses.
The tech company, which is worth £1.2bn and also owns messaging platform WhatsApp, is said to have sacked workers last week after an investigation found staff had been abusing the system, including sending food home when they were not in the office.
That included an unnamed worker on a salary of $400,000 (£308,070), who said he had used his food credits to buy household items and food such as toothpaste and tea.
On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, they wrote: “On days when I didn’t eat in the office, like if my husband was cooking or if I was having dinner with friends, I figured I shouldn’t waste the dinner credit.”
The worker admitted to 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, who first reported the story.
Some employees were also found to have spent the credits on other household items, such as acne pads. Employees who had only occasionally broken 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 for big tech companies.
Meta, which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, typically feeds staff for free in the cafeterias of its largest offices, including its sprawling headquarters in Silicon Valley.
But those at smaller sites receive daily credits to order food through delivery services like UberEats and Grubhub. Daily allowances include $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $25 for dinner.
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In 2022, the company caused an uproar among staff after it decided to delay its daily free dinner service at its Silicon Valley campus by half an hour to 6:30 p.m., as part of broader cuts. It meant fewer employees would eat on campus if they managed to catch the last bus leaving the site at 6 p.m. It also made it harder for employees to stock up on free food to take home as leftovers.
Meta has been contacted for comment.