[echoangle]

Well it was a credit replacing the food that’s normally available. If the stated purpose is credit to get a meal while working there, it’s fraud to buy other stuff with the credit. I can see why an employer would want to terminate you, they have to trust you and your work.

[consteval]

Right, if you're looking at from a surface-level view. Using such a surface-level view means I could, instead, buy a meal and choose not to eat it. Because the credit is only for food.

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.

[echoangle]

> But that's worse, right? Okay, then the conclusion is that this basis doesn't work, and you need some leniency

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.

[consteval]

That's not what the rule is. The rule is you get X amount of money, maximally, to spend on a meal.

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.

[echoangle]

I said:

> 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.

[jcgrillo]

> What happens if you get full, and you have to take some home? Are you now fired?

Only if you don't eat it yourself later ;)

[Ekaros]

Million or two spend on retraining specially when it comes out of budget of teams might not be so bad compared to more oversight from say IRS. I am not sure how meals are handled, but very likely differently from other goods.

Tax and legal implications can be worse than having to fire some people and formal warning showing you did something for others.

[clutchdude]

This is the likely real reason - employer provided meals are a big deductible and providing the proper documentation and management of expenses can be a good kickback on providing that perk.

However, once an employee starts putting expenses that won't pass the smell test, it could threaten the perk.