News/Commentary

Elon Musk says free lunches he nixed at Twitter cost more than $400 per meal, brings receipts

November 14, 2022 | | Print Article

Elon Musk broke the news to Twitter employees on Sunday that there will no longer be free staff lunches at the company’s San Francisco headquarters because they were allegedly costing a whopping $400 a meal since “almost no one” was in the office.

He noted that the average occupancy in the office over the last year was below 10 percent according to badge-in records. It topped out at 25 percent.

Musk took to Twitter on Sunday in response to The New York Times reporting that Twitter employees would have to start paying for their own lunches, just like everyone else does.

He pointed out that criticism of the cut was “especially bizarre given that almost no one came into the office.”

Tracy Hawkins, a former Twitter employee who was the vice president of work transformation, claimed that the assertion by Musk was not true on Twitter, “This is a lie. I ran this program up until a week ago when I resigned because I didn’t want to work for @elonmusk For breakfast & lunch we spent $20-$25 a day per person. This enabled employees to work thru lunchtime & mtgs. Attendance was anything from 20-50% in the offices.”

Musk shot back, “False. Twitter spends $13M/year on food service for SF HQ. Badge in records show peak occupancy was 25%, average occupancy below 10%. There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don’t even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building.”

The Twitter CEO had previously warned employees to expect 80-hour work weeks and fewer perks like free office lunches, according to Bloomberg.

In an interview ahead of the G20 summit in Indonesia, Musk said he was working from “morning to night, seven days a week,” adding, “The amount that I torture myself is next level.” He claims right now he has too much work on his plate.

(Video Credit: Tesla Intelligence UK)

Twitter halted remote working immediately after Musk took the helm. Last week, he fired off an email to staff at 2:39 am that told them to return to the office or “resignation accepted,” according to Business Insider. He ended employees’ ability to work remotely unless he personally approved it.

That email came after Musk terminated roughly 50 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 staff in an effort to cut costs, streamline, and eliminate political partisanship while restoring free speech to the platform.

He also allegedly emailed late Wednesday a warning to employees of “difficult times ahead,” with “no way to sugarcoat the message” about the economic outlook for the company, according to Mint.

The Telegraph is reporting that this weekend, Twitter evidently slashed the number of outsourced workers who handle reports of potentially hateful Tweets, per the technology newsletter Platformer.

One Twitter content moderator named Melissa Ingle, who is transgender, tweeted, “Laid off from Twitter on Saturday evening. No explanation, just all access removed.”

 

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