Twitter workers still employed will now have to pay for lunch

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch at Twitter.

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New owner Elon Musk is looking to cut costs after his pricey takeover, and he says the employees he didn’t fire will now have to pay for their lunches. He estimated the free meals cost the company around $17.2 million a year, according to the New York Post.

Musk has mandated a return to the office, but while some employers have enticed workers to go back after a couple of years away, Twitter is doing the opposite.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted that offering the meals gratis at Twitter’s cafeteria had become unsustainable because “almost no one came to the office.”

A Twitter employee who quit after Musk took over denied his claims hours later, saying the free meals cost the company no more than $33 per person each day.

“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,” tweeted Tracy Hawkins, Twitter’s former vice president of work transformation.

Hawkins added the free food “enabled employees to work thru lunchtime and meetings. Attendance was anything from 20-50% in the offices.”

Musk responded by saying: “There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don’t even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building.”