Elon Musk has been accused of “starving” high-paid employees after scrapping free meals that were supposed to cost over $400 each

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 employees.

Feed on controversy

Since completing his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, Musk has been trying to make that happen struggling company leaner, cheaper and more efficient. In addition to cutting at least half the company’s workforce and requiring media personalities to pay a monthly subscription fee for verification, the the richest man in the world has clamped down against exorbitant meal costs.

The New York Times reported on Nov. 11 that Musk plans to make staff — who loud Zippi earn a starting salary of $106,000 – pay for their own lunch. The meals had previously been subsidized by the company.

in one now deleted tweetAndrew Wortman, a supporter of Gay AF Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), wrote: “He fired 3/4 of the staff.

Wortman added that being the richest man in the world is “failure incarnate.”

Croatian poker host Tatjana Pašalić replied: ask“Is that a parody?”

Musk was similarly unsure Write“I can not say it.”

Some commenters referenced Milton Friedman’s 1975 book There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, in which he ridiculed the notion that Musk was starving high-paid employees by requiring them to take care of their own lunch needs.

Journalist and novelist Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer pointed out that lunch “isn’t even free in the White House, in the Senate, in the State Department… You don’t even get a free lunch at work in a socialist country.”

McAteer further suggested that “if you need to retain your employees by offering them a free lunch, then you have a culture problem at your company.”

Musk openly dismissed Wortman’s accusation as absurd humor, writing, “Especially bizarre given the fact that almost no one came into the office. Estimated cost per lunch served over the last 12 months is >$400.”

Former Twitter contributor Tracy Hawkins claimed the >$400 estimate was “a lie”.

“I ran this program until a week ago when I quit because I didn’t want to work for @elonmusk,” Hawkins wrote. “We spent $20 to $25 per day per person on breakfast and lunch. This allowed employees to work until midday and midday. Office attendance was between 20 and 25%.”

The unemployed Hawkins did not specify whether the estimate of $20 to $25 per person was a breakdown based on the average number of employees who showed up, people on the payroll, or people connected to the office.

If attendance was low but subsistence costs (e.g. labour) remained at levels that should accommodate many more people, then the average cost per capita in terms of people using the services could well be Reflect Musk’s estimate.

Musk suggested this in a follow-up tweet: “Twitter spends $13 million a year on food service for SF HQ. The badge in the logs shows that the peak utilization was 25%, the average utilization was under 10%. There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don’t even bother to serve dinner because nobody is in the building.”

Musk’s suggestion that very few would use the $13 million-a-year service at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters ties into another problem he’s trying to solve: a significant number of Twitter employees is reluctant to come into the office.

On Thursday, Musk told employees they would only be allowed to work remotely “in exceptional cases for exceptional people.”

according to a copy Of the meeting The Verde received, Musk said, “Let me be very clear. If people don’t come back to the office, when they can come back to the office, they can’t stay with the company. End of the story.”

Musk added, “If you can show up at an office and you don’t show up at the office, the resignation will be accepted.”