Facebook and Instagram parent Meta has reportedly fired about 22 employees in Los Angeles for misusing their $25-a-day food allowance to provide household supplies such as wine glasses, acne pillows and laundry detergent.
The sacked workers were found to have misused the meal credit program – intended for workers who stay at the office late or are based in offices without a kitchen – over a long period of time, the Financial Times reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The layoffs were part of a broader restructuring at Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant that prompted job cuts across multiple business segments on Tuesday, including its Instagram, WhatsApp and Reality Labs teams.
The employees who were axed because of the food program lies were notified last week.
Some Meta employees complained about the crackdown on Blind, an app that verifies that its users work for the companies they claim but allows them to remain anonymous.
“On days when I wouldn’t eat at the office, if my husband would cook or have dinner with friends, I thought I shouldn’t waste the dinner credit,” writes a former Meta employee in a first post. from FT.
The worker, who said they had a $400,000 salary and occasionally used the $25 credit to buy items from Rite Aid, described the situation as “almost surreal.”
In some cases, workers misused the benefit by having meals delivered to their homes instead of the office or by bundling their loans together.
Other employees were given warnings for policy violations but were not fired, the report said.
Another Meta employee, however, claimed to Blind that the fired workers “were given a warning to stop, which most of them did, but were fired 3 months later even after the stop.”
“It looks like the warnings mean nothing and more people will be laid off over the next few months. I understand that policies can be strict, but this seems outrageous,” the employee wrote.
Meta did not specifically comment on the dismissals.
“Today, several teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy,” the company said in a statement.
“This includes moving some teams to different locations and moving some employees into different roles. In situations like this, when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for affected employees,” the company added.
The exact number of employees affected by the restructuring was not immediately clear.
Zuckerberg had previously cut more than 21,000 jobs last year in what he called an “efficiency year” at the Big Tech giant.
The cost-cutting moves came as Meta shifted more resources to artificial intelligence.
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