I and a few of my past co-workers have been suspecting that the facilities team in a big tech company I used to work for had an evil genius plan to reduce costs:
1. Pick the most popular snack (e.g. nachos)
2. Replace it with less tasty alternative (e.g. kale chips) "for your health"
3. Consumption is a few times smaller
4. The company can claim they take better care of their workers and no one can accuse them of being stingy
I had the same thing at one of my previous gigs. We used to have (allegedly unhealthy) snacks all the time, then they had some kind of bullshit campaign where they would not restock the snacks for one month and donate the cost to the homeless (fair enough), but guess what happened at the end of that campaign - still no snacks.
6. Fire the engineer pointing out that the pay of even one member of the finance team during this 2-month project would have paid for nachos for the whole company for 10 years.
I can't eat a lot of types of food due to allergies. Meat is one of the few things I still can eat without issue. Yes, there are actually people out there (hi, me!) that actually cannot eliminate certain foods from our diets without getting sick. This policy would prevent me from being able to work at that company, for recognized medical health reasons, because I would not be able to do legitimate expenses of food related to travel, nor would I be able to eat probably anything during the "summer camp".
I also have serious concerns about letting companies have moral opinions about paying for choices you make for your own health, for example with health insurance, and considering the current supreme court situation, maybe you should too.
Not only is it terrible from a dietary standpoint, it reveals an intolerant workplace culture that I certainly wouldn't want any part of. Most of the world, and likely most of their employees, eat meat. It shows a serious lack of connection with the real world, and a willingness on the part of management to forcefully impose extreme views on a whim.
Sounds like an unhealthy place to work, even if they all become vegetarians.
“Intensely terrible” is one way to phrase “illegal under the ADA”...
I would assume there will be accommodations made for folks with dietary restrictions that require them to eat meat, whether that’s through a simple waiver or a massive lawsuit.
I'm also on a FODMAP diet - I've started bringing my own food in to work because I can't eat what they serve at work on this diet. I really don't see a problem. It's impossible to cater to every possible taste, allergy, intolerance and belief. It's nice to make an effort to cater for as many people as possible, but nobody's forcing anybody to eat anything here.
It is possible to go meat free on the fodmap diet, by the way (although people's definitions of the diet are admittedly inconsistent, and it is tricky). To be honest, meat is one the the things I find hard to eat because it's so often cooked with garlic.
It’s nice that companies are releasing these types of policies publicly so peopl can choose whether to work there. It’s sometimes hard to get a good bead in company culture due to reporting bias of people there or who left. Stuff like this will help companies and workers find each other.
I worked for a company for a while before I learned their expense policy was really frustrating. $40 max expenses and their headquarters and work location was on Spear Street in San Francisco. They also wouldn’t allow any alcohol and required receipts for any expense. It wasn’t so onerous to make me quit, but it was annoying and kind of indicative of their philosophy on cost cutting.
Had I known about this it would have changed the weighting on some other offers I didn’t take.
While I don't think this "forces" a vegetarian diet on the employees, it is placing the employees in a situation where their company is promoting a particular ideology/lifestyle/diet through financial motivation. Dining is generally reimbursed during business travel due to the (often significant) increased cost of having to exclusively dine out, so the option for the employee is to eat vegetarian or accept additional personal finance costs. (I would also question the feasibility of finding vegetarian options all the time, but that might be due to my work travel sometimes taking me to more rural areas).
The question then becomes, is it acceptable for a business to use monetary incentive/disincentive to encourage lifestyle or ideological changes in it's employees?
In this case exacerbated by the fact that said lifestyle or ideological change involves one of the bare necessities (since all of the "equivalent" examples I've seen do not).
If the "monetary incentive" is, in other words, to provide something for free to every employee then I don't see any inherent problem. What I do think is an actual problem is making an employee pay for any potential extra expenses during a business trip.
Being a vegetarian is exactly as equal a choice of freedom as being an omnivore or carnivore. This feels wrong to push this lifestyle on people. Of course one can always just not do business with We Work.
Let's not be hyperbolic here. Serving food that doesn't happen to contain meat isn't forcing you to be vegetarian any more than serving only soft drinks at an event would be forcing you to be a teetotaler.
Your comment is much more polite than my knee-jerk reaction was going to be. I am thankful you made it before I made a poor comment.
I have no problem recognizing climate change and the impact humanity has had on climate change, but for some reason my brain dismisses a vegetarian diet for the sake of affecting climate change as an absurdity. I don't know why. I feel I am open minded out other things related to climate change, or vegan/vegetarian-ism. I don't doubt the science behind it at all, I just find it silly for some reason. I raise livestock on my own land for food and also hunt, maybe that bias has something to do with it.
Like it or not, this is the side of history that will eventually win out. In 50-100 years from now, expect this kind of arrangement to be very common with American companies.
Yes, they should be forced to pay for the things normally required of an employer. Including reasonable meals during business travel. The individual employee can choose on their own to be vegan or vegetarian, or to eat meat.
Why should the individual rights of the employee be surpassed by the rights of the powerful employer?
> Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
I'm pretty sure this is the exact argument by social conservatives when it comes to mandated birth control coverage (not taking a stance simply stating a fact).
Another point, not related to my response, is that non-meat dishes at a restaurant are similarly priced to some meat dishes, like a club sandwich and a salad. So the argument from a price standpoint is moot imo.
I can understand not wanting to do it at company sponsored events but seems wack to not do it for an individual's meal. I think this will promote shaming on employees who eat meat.
> WeWork isn't forcing employees to be vegetarian (it's not like a hiring requirement)
They're making a portion of wages/compensation contingent on eating vegetarian. If someone doesn't want to eat vegetarian when out on business, they have to pay for it themselves, where as a meal costing the exact same but lacking meat would be. I'd understand if it were a company based on vegetarian/vegan products, much like I'd understand a church choosing not to buy health care reimbursing birth control, but this doesn't appear to be that.
That said, I'm less concerned about meat at company events - the company can choose to cater whatever it wants - in much the same way I'd be fine with a friend hosting a party that didn't serve meat, but would consider it a pretty obnoxious faux pas to offer to buy dinner for me, but then ditch the check because I ordered a dish with chicken in it. Sure, I might stay friends with them, but it's a pretty good indicator of what kind of person they are.
> most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing
These tend to be pretty banal and don't really take a moral stance on whatever the employee's buying - "don't spend more than $x", "don't eat more than x times per day", "fly economy", etc. This would be more akin to "You cannot reimburse food containing Kale", "you cannot reimburse food bought at Olive Garden", "You must fly with Alaska on business trips", and so on. Maybe technically legal, but super obnoxious and arbitrary.
> Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
Yes, I don't want my employer withholding compensation based on their own morals. See: companies refusing to pay for insurance covering birth control. Also consider hypotheticals where the otherwise secular employer doesn't pay for meals from non-halal/kosher restaurants, or which only stocks raw water in the company fridges, or which only allow employees to expense stays at hotels if they attend a sermon during work hours. Some of those might be illegal, some not (I'm honestly not sure on employment law for most of those) but all are just super obnoxious and disrespectful to their employees.
My employer has enough control over my life already. They definitely shouldn't also punish me financially for having different opinions than them.
To put a point on it: I don't think this particular case should necessarily rise to the level of "illegal", but I do consider it rude to the employees for taking away autonomy and implicitly disrespecting choices the employee makes. It's also overall pretty narcissistic of them to assume they both have the right opinions, and those opinions are so right that they should inflict them on their employees.
At the very least, I'm glad they're advertising this - now I know where not to work.
> co-founder Miguel McKelvey said the firm’s upcoming internal “Summer Camp” retreat would offer no meat options for attendees.
Maybe if they care about the environment perhaps they should skip the summer camp retreat and donate the money to charity? It certainly is not an essential thing to be doing.
It's funny to observe the criticism on a technical forum that should be in tune with the data. WeWork is setting a policy that is on the right side of history—for animals and the environment. I didn't see a lot of criticism on Starbucks straw decision. However, when the cost is a sacrifice closer to home, even when logic doesn't support the whining, so many try to find fault with a company decision that is net positive.
"But what was especially interesting was that those who viewed vegetarians more negatively were also more likely to expect that vegetarians would view them negatively, suggesting that a fear of moral reproach might underlie negative views of vegetarians. Supporting this idea, when the threat of moral reproach was experimentally manipulated, the researchers found that it increased negative evaluations of vegetarians."
> In an email to employees this week outlining the new policy, co-founder Miguel McKelvey said the firm’s upcoming internal "Summer Camp" retreat would offer no meat options for attendees.
Unlike some commenters, I'm okay with this! But the carbon cost of flying thousands of their employees on transatlantic return flights to the UK for this Summer Camp will be orders of magnitude greater than the carbon cost of any food choices, so it seems like an insincere concern.
Like most fake vegetarians, the policy apparently does not include any aquatic creatures like fish, squid, whales, or dolphins...even though the latter two are intelligent mammals with more capacity to feel pain than any type of poultry.
Is anybody being flown to this summer camp? A couple hours on a plane can match a few months of meat-free lunches. Especially considering employees might partially compensate with their non-expensed meals.
"A couple hours on a plane can match a few months of meat-free lunches."
I think you are mistaken there. Maybe if you only care about CO2 emissions, but meat production is also incredibly wasteful on resources like water, and is at least objectionable from an animal welfare standpoint.
This creates goodwill among vegetarians within the company, who will appreciate being part of this uniquely progressive organization. However, their lives will not actually change very much - they won't have to witness meat at company events, sure, but their travel lives will be the same - they will just order vegetarian, like usual.
This creates ill-will among meat eaters at the company, who will want to eat burgers and pork chops and will not be able to do so on the company expense, like every other company allows. Unlike the vegetarians, they will be reminded of this not only at company events but also every time they get food while traveling, as they have to think through what they are allowed to eat and see all the meat options, knowing that WeWork is the reason they can't have them.
The animosity outweighs the goodwill here by a large margin. Retention will suffer.
As a business decision this seems incredibly odd. Being vegetarian or supporting vegetarianism does not seem like it would have disproportionate representation among either their target clientele or their target employees. As such it seems to me it would have minor negative effect on their perception by clients, and moderately negative impact on their perception by employees. I don't see why they would risk that for a cause entirely unconnected to their business, for which there are many less controversial ways to make an impact (energy efficiency in their buildings, commitment to purchase carbon free energy, etc).
[+] [-] kozikow|7 years ago|reply
1. Pick the most popular snack (e.g. nachos)
2. Replace it with less tasty alternative (e.g. kale chips) "for your health"
3. Consumption is a few times smaller
4. The company can claim they take better care of their workers and no one can accuse them of being stingy
5. Finance team high-fives each other
[+] [-] Rjevski|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pera|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candiodari|7 years ago|reply
6. Fire the engineer pointing out that the pay of even one member of the finance team during this 2-month project would have paid for nachos for the whole company for 10 years.
[+] [-] kyledrake|7 years ago|reply
I also have serious concerns about letting companies have moral opinions about paying for choices you make for your own health, for example with health insurance, and considering the current supreme court situation, maybe you should too.
[+] [-] downandout|7 years ago|reply
Sounds like an unhealthy place to work, even if they all become vegetarians.
[+] [-] donutte|7 years ago|reply
I would assume there will be accommodations made for folks with dietary restrictions that require them to eat meat, whether that’s through a simple waiver or a massive lawsuit.
[+] [-] IneffablePigeon|7 years ago|reply
It is possible to go meat free on the fodmap diet, by the way (although people's definitions of the diet are admittedly inconsistent, and it is tricky). To be honest, meat is one the the things I find hard to eat because it's so often cooked with garlic.
[+] [-] koala_man|7 years ago|reply
I absolutely agree. Fortunately, no one is doing that. WeWork employees can eat as much meat as they want. It's just that WeWork won't pay for it.
[+] [-] jlarocco|7 years ago|reply
Their employees are still free to buy all the meat they want.
[+] [-] curo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] prepend|7 years ago|reply
I worked for a company for a while before I learned their expense policy was really frustrating. $40 max expenses and their headquarters and work location was on Spear Street in San Francisco. They also wouldn’t allow any alcohol and required receipts for any expense. It wasn’t so onerous to make me quit, but it was annoying and kind of indicative of their philosophy on cost cutting.
Had I known about this it would have changed the weighting on some other offers I didn’t take.
[+] [-] mreome|7 years ago|reply
The question then becomes, is it acceptable for a business to use monetary incentive/disincentive to encourage lifestyle or ideological changes in it's employees?
[+] [-] ravitation|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pera|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunderbunder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolsal|7 years ago|reply
I have no problem recognizing climate change and the impact humanity has had on climate change, but for some reason my brain dismisses a vegetarian diet for the sake of affecting climate change as an absurdity. I don't know why. I feel I am open minded out other things related to climate change, or vegan/vegetarian-ism. I don't doubt the science behind it at all, I just find it silly for some reason. I raise livestock on my own land for food and also hunt, maybe that bias has something to do with it.
[+] [-] inertiatic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArtWomb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|7 years ago|reply
But, really......
[+] [-] meowface|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] curo|7 years ago|reply
- WeWork isn't forcing employees to be vegetarian (it's not like a hiring requirement)
- most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing
- WeWork has decided they won't reimburse meat (employees can still buy meat)
Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
[+] [-] temp54679680544|7 years ago|reply
Why should the individual rights of the employee be surpassed by the rights of the powerful employer?
[+] [-] jhayward|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdamM12|7 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure this is the exact argument by social conservatives when it comes to mandated birth control coverage (not taking a stance simply stating a fact).
Another point, not related to my response, is that non-meat dishes at a restaurant are similarly priced to some meat dishes, like a club sandwich and a salad. So the argument from a price standpoint is moot imo.
I can understand not wanting to do it at company sponsored events but seems wack to not do it for an individual's meal. I think this will promote shaming on employees who eat meat.
[+] [-] null000|7 years ago|reply
They're making a portion of wages/compensation contingent on eating vegetarian. If someone doesn't want to eat vegetarian when out on business, they have to pay for it themselves, where as a meal costing the exact same but lacking meat would be. I'd understand if it were a company based on vegetarian/vegan products, much like I'd understand a church choosing not to buy health care reimbursing birth control, but this doesn't appear to be that.
That said, I'm less concerned about meat at company events - the company can choose to cater whatever it wants - in much the same way I'd be fine with a friend hosting a party that didn't serve meat, but would consider it a pretty obnoxious faux pas to offer to buy dinner for me, but then ditch the check because I ordered a dish with chicken in it. Sure, I might stay friends with them, but it's a pretty good indicator of what kind of person they are.
> most companies have restrictions and rules surrounding their expensing
These tend to be pretty banal and don't really take a moral stance on whatever the employee's buying - "don't spend more than $x", "don't eat more than x times per day", "fly economy", etc. This would be more akin to "You cannot reimburse food containing Kale", "you cannot reimburse food bought at Olive Garden", "You must fly with Alaska on business trips", and so on. Maybe technically legal, but super obnoxious and arbitrary.
> Should we force WeWork leadership, despite their rights to hold moral positions, to pay for something they don't want to pay for?
Yes, I don't want my employer withholding compensation based on their own morals. See: companies refusing to pay for insurance covering birth control. Also consider hypotheticals where the otherwise secular employer doesn't pay for meals from non-halal/kosher restaurants, or which only stocks raw water in the company fridges, or which only allow employees to expense stays at hotels if they attend a sermon during work hours. Some of those might be illegal, some not (I'm honestly not sure on employment law for most of those) but all are just super obnoxious and disrespectful to their employees.
My employer has enough control over my life already. They definitely shouldn't also punish me financially for having different opinions than them.
To put a point on it: I don't think this particular case should necessarily rise to the level of "illegal", but I do consider it rude to the employees for taking away autonomy and implicitly disrespecting choices the employee makes. It's also overall pretty narcissistic of them to assume they both have the right opinions, and those opinions are so right that they should inflict them on their employees.
At the very least, I'm glad they're advertising this - now I know where not to work.
[+] [-] 1_800_UNICORN|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I believe that in 100 years we'll look at today as the dark ages in terms of the scale of our industrial meat production.
So, I'm cautiously curious to see if other companies follow suit or not.
[+] [-] user5994461|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|7 years ago|reply
Maybe if they care about the environment perhaps they should skip the summer camp retreat and donate the money to charity? It certainly is not an essential thing to be doing.
[+] [-] teaneedz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charmides|7 years ago|reply
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/2017...
"But what was especially interesting was that those who viewed vegetarians more negatively were also more likely to expect that vegetarians would view them negatively, suggesting that a fear of moral reproach might underlie negative views of vegetarians. Supporting this idea, when the threat of moral reproach was experimentally manipulated, the researchers found that it increased negative evaluations of vegetarians."
[+] [-] drcharris|7 years ago|reply
https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-...
I hope there's more to Starbucks' plan than this, and that they've got a better lid in the works.
[+] [-] ChickeNES|7 years ago|reply
There's been plenty
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/opinions/starbucks-plastic-dr...
[+] [-] tracker1|7 years ago|reply
I know eggs and fish are okay, but what were the eggs fed? It does matter. If it's a company event, will there be eggs and fish, or just soy products?
[+] [-] cjbprime|7 years ago|reply
Unlike some commenters, I'm okay with this! But the carbon cost of flying thousands of their employees on transatlantic return flights to the UK for this Summer Camp will be orders of magnitude greater than the carbon cost of any food choices, so it seems like an insincere concern.
[+] [-] fulafel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|7 years ago|reply
What about dolphin?
[+] [-] gamblor956|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdamM12|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timavr|7 years ago|reply
After paying rent, rice is the only option.
[+] [-] lozenge|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charmides|7 years ago|reply
I think you are mistaken there. Maybe if you only care about CO2 emissions, but meat production is also incredibly wasteful on resources like water, and is at least objectionable from an animal welfare standpoint.
[+] [-] proofbygazing|7 years ago|reply
This creates goodwill among vegetarians within the company, who will appreciate being part of this uniquely progressive organization. However, their lives will not actually change very much - they won't have to witness meat at company events, sure, but their travel lives will be the same - they will just order vegetarian, like usual.
This creates ill-will among meat eaters at the company, who will want to eat burgers and pork chops and will not be able to do so on the company expense, like every other company allows. Unlike the vegetarians, they will be reminded of this not only at company events but also every time they get food while traveling, as they have to think through what they are allowed to eat and see all the meat options, knowing that WeWork is the reason they can't have them.
The animosity outweighs the goodwill here by a large margin. Retention will suffer.
[+] [-] minimaxir|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott00|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munificent|7 years ago|reply
Maybe they just really believe in it.