Posted on 11/16/2022 11:47:19 AM PST by Red Badger
Woe to the tech tycoon who thinks there's no such thing as a free lunch. Twitter CEO Elon Musk has come under fire this week for ending his newly acquired company's regime of free meals, with some critics going so far as to accuse him of starving his staff.
Feeding off controversy Since completing his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, Musk has sought to make the struggling company leaner, more cost-effective, and more efficient. In addition to slashing at least half of the company's workforce and requiring media personalities to pay a monthly subscription fee for verification, the world's richest man has clamped down on exorbitant meal costs.
The New York Times reported on Nov. 11 that Musk plans to make employees — who according to Zippia earn a starting salary of $106,000 — pay for their own lunches. Meals had previously been subsidized by the company.
In a now-deleted tweet, Andrew Wortman, a "Gay AF" Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) supporter, wrote, "He fired 3/4 of the employees. Now he's planning to starve the rest of them."
Wortman added that the world's richest man was "failure incarnate."
Croatian poker presenter Tatjana Pašalić responded, asking, "is this a parody?"
Musk was similarly unsure, writing, "I can't tell."
Some commenters referenced Milton Friedman's 1975 book, "There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch," when ridiculing the notion that Musk was starving highly paid employees by requiring them to sort out their own noontime dietary needs.
Journalist and novelist Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer pointed out that lunch isn't "even free at the White House, Senate, State Department ... you don't even get a free lunch in a socialist country at work."
McAteer suggested further that "if you need to keep your employees retention by offering them a free lunch then you have a problem with your company's culture."
Taking Wortman's accusation on its face rather than as absurdist humor, Musk wrote, "Especially bizarre given that almost no one came to the office. Estimated cost per lunch served in past 12 months is >$400."
They should be eating Bugs
I’m currently out of work, but starting a job next week. I’ve been buying groceries and everything else from existing funds, and these guys have the nerve to say Musk is trying to starve them by asking them to buy their own food, while they still go to their high-paying jobs?
They vill eat ze boogs.
Some of those slobs could stand a fast…
they should be eating used cow feed.
I can’t recall who was the buyer, but I studied someone in my MBA classes who would buy failing companies and turn them around. The first thing he did was take away corporate supplied cars, meals, gulf club memberships and all of the other “benefits” the company gave their upper echelon. It always made the staff he kept angry. But he consistently turned failing companies into profitable companies.
My general takeaway was the people running companies saw them as their personal fiefdoms, not as the means to produce a product or service.
P&J biatches
I’m not a fan of Musk but I love what he’s doing at Tweater.
From what I can see, liberals haven’t left in mass numbers yet either.
Much like all the celebs who threaten to leave the US when a Republican is elected.
I used to work at a major USA Corp many years ago.
One of my accounting functions was to process Expense Reports.
Every item had to have a back up document-—even lunch at Wendy’s.
IF these people at Twitter turned in Expense Reports-requesting repayment- and they falsified those reports to ANY degree-—They have committed FRAUD.
I would vote to PROSECUTE all of them.
Expense Report rules are pretty basic in businesses.
What a joke. He should fire them, then send a fruit basket to their home.
And the employees were barely using it...net costs amounted to about $400 per lunch in overhead and waste. Crazy.
I have worked for 4 different companies that have been bought out by other companies.
EVERY TIME the new company owners came in a fired all the management top to bottom..................
“if you need to keep your employees retention by offering them a free lunch then you have a problem with your company’s culture.”
The best I ever ate was on remote oil-drilling rigs where we stayed on-site for the week. If they didn’t provide good food the workers wouldn’t be happy. So perhaps that is the exception that proves the rule.
I wonder how many twitter workers were pissed when they saw others getting their “free lunch” while they had to eat special food from home due to dietary needs, or were working from home?
OTOH, I wonder how many young workers stayed late to work on projects knowing that they could run down and get a free dinner rather than going home for the day?
Seems like a free lunch is up to the company to figure out what works best for them.
But $400 for EACH lunch? I wonder if that is per paycheck (2 weeks) or what?
This is a plus for restaurants in the area - hundreds of them. I used to work in the area, and enjoyed walking up Larkin Street to the many Asian restaurants. Big meals for under $5 a plate, including free tea. I even worked in that building for a while before it was bought by Twitter (building complex includes a modern building bridged over a street to the vintage one at the front, huge). Sadly, I had no free lunch at work.
I have a cousin who works at Google (Alphabet) out of New York. They have exquisite perks including basically all you can eat all day, a fine dining establishment, and other activities. The idea is that you keep the employees on site as much as possible, working together as long as possible and never giving them much reason to leave the campus. They can take breaks, play hoops, ping pong etc as long as they stay productive and work and play and eat together in that effort.
But that’s Google. They innovate a lot. They have a lot of cash. They invent a lot of new things. This is Twitter. They don’t invent much of anything. A few people code, a few tweak things. Otherwise it’s not much of anything going on except seemingly a bitch session. I expect Elon will try to change that and when he does the free lunches will probably return. My guess is, besides trying to save cash, he wants to find out who is really dedicated to the company’s new mission. Those who are will “suffer” by having to make sandwiches at home.
Well said.
Those lefties are all talk but no action.
It’s the cost of the staff the food and the building. The spreads they put out were truly great. Most companies don’t do that. It was one of the features of working there early on. Trying to make up for long hours and no days off
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