Along with mandating a return to the office, Elon Musk has announced that no one gets a free lunch at Twitter. Literally.
Twitter employees will now have to pay for their own meals at the company cafeteria, a perk that was free before Musk’s takeover of the social media site.
Twitter workers who survived the chopping block after Elon Musk overpaid for the social media site will soon have to pay for their own meals.
The billionaire said he will scrap the free meals served at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco because it was costing the company around $400 per worker.
Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter last month and promptly fired about half of the 7,500-person workforce.
He also proceeded to mandate a return to the office and pointed to the lack of mouths to feed as driving up the cost of the free-lunch program.
Musk took to Twitter on Sunday to say that offering free meals at the company cafeteria had become unsustainable because “almost no one came to the office.”
He estimated the free meals cost the company around $13 million a year.
One Twitter user accused Musk of planning to “starve” employees.
He fired 3/4 of the employees. Now he’s planning to starve the rest of them. He’s failure incarnate. pic.twitter.com/elL8N3D2CB
— Andrew Wortman (@AmoneyResists) November 12, 2022
For the “I bring my own lunch” crowd, that’s a shame but not relevant. Twitter was a company that provided lunch for its employees for free for ten years and has now abruptly stopped because it’s CEO is a cheap pile of garbage.
— Andrew Wortman (@AmoneyResists) November 12, 2022
twitter is a big tech firm where free lunch is the norm, but they sure were saving money when everyone was working remotely! now they’ve lost lunch and have to pay transport, which are 2 unexpected increases in costs in a short time. necessary bc new boss overpaid for the company
— Lisa 🏹🗽❤️ (@audreysl0ve) November 14, 2022
Responses to the whinging were amusing.
The fork and knife symbol denotes a business where prepared food is sold. Here are a bunch right near Twitter’s headquarters. The rotisserie chicken and chicken fat rice at RT Rotisserie is great (go for the Douglas Fir sour cream as your sauce). Hopefully nobody starves! pic.twitter.com/yILiXds7mL
— Jesse Franklin-Murdock (@MurdockJDF) November 13, 2022
Did you pay income tax on those free meals….if not, that’s a huge problem.
As a general rule, the value of meals that you provide an employee in addition to his or her salary must be included in the employee’s gross income for tax purposes.
— 🇺🇸 Afterseven ✝️ 🍊 (@Afterseven) November 15, 2022
Strange tweet, even for Twitter.
Does anybody really think that companies that don’t provide free lunch are “starving” their employees?
I never worked anywhere where lunch was free but somehow I survived. LOL. https://t.co/VO1ObJpGy3— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) November 13, 2022
