Question:
My employer fired me this morning for an “offense” so minor it’s laughable—especially since dozens of other employees do the same thing.
Here’s what happened. My employer issues meal vouchers employees can use if they have pizza or sandwiches delivered to them at their desks when they’re working through lunch or into the evening. Since I didn’t take lunch for three days last week, and I prefer the variety offered by the grocery store’s deli, I used my vouchers there on the way home. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me. The HR manager confronted me this morning and said my employer considered this voucher misuse. I argued it wasn’t, as I worked through lunch. What’s the difference if I want to eat my lunch at home?
This isn’t my first go-round with this employer’s pettiness. My job requires I travel at least twice monthly. When I travel, I like to get food on the plane or pick up a Krispy Kreme donut and maybe a latte at Starbucks. This saves me from having to eat an early breakfast before I catch the plane and makes travel more palatable. I used my company credit card for these purchases, which seemed reasonable to me as I’d be using the card later in the day for lunch, dinner and lodging. HR issued me a warning and gave me the opportunity to repay the company. Of course I didn’t. I consider airplane and airport food a legitimate perk, especially since I work longer than eight hours a day when traveling.
I hope you’ll publish my employer’s name.
Answer:
Instead of naming your employer, I’ll name Meta, Wells Fargo, Ernst & Young, and Target. These and other employers deploy perk police to bust employees for what employees consider the equivalent of getting a traffic ticket for driving 70 miles per hour despite a posted 65 mile per hour speed limit.
Like your employer, Meta provides meal vouchers to employees so they can have food delivered to their offices while working. When an internal investigation uncovered two dozen employees using the meal credits to have meals delivered to their homes or purchase items such as wine glasses, Meta fired them, https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/17/tech/meta-employees-fired-meal-credits-layoffs/index.html.
An employee quoted in Wall Street Journal’s October 2024 article commented “don’t abuse any privilege because it’s not worth the risk” after noting his former employee fired six sales employees for using meal stipends to buy groceries, https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/the-little-sins-we-commit-at-workand-the-bosses-who-are-cracking-down-74929770.
Wells Fargo fired or suspended more than a dozen bankers for putting dinners on the company tab and altering the timestamps on the receipts or ordering takeout before the allowed time, https://www.advisorhub.com/wells-fargo-is-investigating-bankers-alleged-expense-violations/.
Ernst & Young cracked down on employees that didn’t take training seriously. When it discovered some employees watched more than one online course simultaneously and axed them, some employees defended their behavior as “multi-tasking,” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ey-fires-staff-multiple-online-training-courses-meta.
Target’s code of conduct prohibits employees from using their position to gain an unfair advantage over customers with high-demand or limited-stock items. When customers couldn’t buy coveted Stanley water bottles and the company learned that seven employees had purchased them ahead of the public, the company fired them, https://www.businessinsider.com/target-workers-caught-off-guard-by-stanley-cup-crackdown-2024-1.
Why have companies started cracking down on rule-breakers and rule-benders? First, employers offer perks for a reason. They give meal vouchers to keep employees working at their desks, not to provide after work snacks. Second, they want to cut expenses. Third, employers finding themselves over-staffed after post pandemic hiring sprees are using code of conduct violations to push out unwanted employees, https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/the-little-sins-we-commit-at-workand-the-bosses-who-are-cracking-down-74929770. Fourth, employers may find themselves in tax trouble if they allow funds earmarked for perks and business expenses to be diverted to less legitimate expenses.
Finally, I challenge your assertion that your employer’s firing you for rule-bending is laughable because a) it’s minor, b) everyone does it, and c) your employer owes perks to you. As I wrote in “Twilight Ethics,” Solutions, https://bit.ly/3FcApi9, you’ve allowed your ethical muscle to become flabby by de-sensitizing yourself to incremental dishonesty. Worse, when others point it out to you, you argue. Even when others also do the wrong thing, even when you can get away with something, even when the wrong thing seems like it’s no big deal, it is.
© 2024 Lynne Curry, PhD, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
p.s. If you enjoyed this article, you may like, Solutions: 411: Workplace Answers; 911: Revelations for Workplace Challenges and Firefights, https://bit.ly/3FcApi9https://bit.ly/3FcApi9.
I don’t think this is the hill I’d want to die (or be fired) on. I tend to swing the opposite way and buy most of my own food even when traveling for the company because I’d have to eat anyway and usually when I’m traveling it’s in a place cheaper than where I live so the food prices are less than normal. Kind of a win for the employer and for me. And other people behaving unethically doesn’t excuse one’s own unethical behavior. It can feel unfair when an employer calls you out for it but doesn’t call them out, but I’d be asking myself why that is. There’s usually a reason.
Great comment, Dee. I also wound up taking my own food so I could sleep later in the a.m. and/or having health food, and not using all the money.
Ex employee:
” I argued it wasn’t”; “This isn’t my first go-round with this employer’s pettiness. “; “HR issued me a warning and gave me the opportunity to repay the company. Of course I didn’t.” “I hope you’ll publish my employer’s name.”
Rather than “argue” and smolder with resentment, an “at will” employee needs to realize how tenuous their job becomes when swimming against the tide…
Even though “disclosures” are rather restricted today, an employee’s troublesome history often precedes them when seeking employment.
WOW! Thanks for the wake up call!
This post raises some great alerts about vouchers and about misusing and misinterpreting what the perks are intended for. Conditions are conditions, and using the vouchers other ways violates the conditions. The employers are going to a lot of trouble to fire employers and spending a fair amount of time tracking voucher use and misuse. It might have been a little more transparent and seemingly well meaning to give employees notice that voucher use and misuse was being tracked. The way the firings happened seems a little sneaky, even if justified.
Personally, I dislike and mistrust vouchers and oppose their use. Talking more about that will get me on a while different subject and I’d probably better not go there. But responsible distributions of vouchers also means tracking and following through on how they are used (and misused).
Good points, Suz, though I remember an employee of mine in the years before long-distance calls were “free,” who made multiple hour long calls to his relatives every week. Then, when I called him on it, he told me it was a legitimate perk. Still, I think you’re right in that a number of employers are using the violations as an easy way to avoid layoffs when they want to trim staff. And in my mind the best employees have a stellar code of ethics.