Meta fires employees for spending food allowances on personal items like acne pads and wine glasses

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, has fired around two dozen employees from its Los Angeles office for misusing company meal credits for things like laundry detergent, wine glasses and acne treatment pads.

Many of Meta’s corporate offices feature elaborate food services to provide employees with meals all free for staff but Meta employees at smaller offices without food services are provided meal vouchers - $20 for breakfast and $25 each for lunch and dinner so they can have food delivered to the office while on the job.

The meal vouchers are meant for employees to eat while working at the office but an internal investigation found that some Los Angeles-based employees used the meal funds to purchase things other than food instead, or had meals delivered to their homes, the source said in a report to Financial Times leading to their sack.

The firings, which took place last week,  comes as Meta acknowledged on Thursday that it was laying off people across the company as part of a series of separate restructurings.

“Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said in a statement.

“This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”

Meta declined to share how many employees were laid off.

The cuts took place across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Reality Labs, which houses Meta’s virtual reality and metaverse efforts.

Meta laid off more than 20,000 employees last year over multiple rounds of cuts, in an effort to reverse a year of revenue declines and stagnating user growth, which Zuckerberg termed its “year of efficiency.” The company’s shares (META) are up nearly 80% from this time last year