
WeWork Tells Employees Meat Is Permanently Off the Company Menu - everdev
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/wework-tells-employees-meat-is-permanently-off-the-company-menu
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ggg9990
I would tell any company that tried to dictate the content of my expensed
meals while traveling to go fuck themselves. Sadly I know that not everyone
has the privilege of doing so

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walrus01
I want to know how they plan to enforce it. Let's say I'm traveling and eat at
an airport restaurant in the departure area. The receipt says "burger". I say
I ordered the tofurkey burger. How can they prove I didn't?

~~~
trentlott
Take a picture of the menu after you double check your receipt, I guess. Or
don't order risky items.

I doubt any restaurant would list a veggie burger as "Burger". There'd be a
"V" or something, to explain why it was $2 extra.

~~~
craftyguy
I bet most waitresses/waiters would ring you up for some other dish that is
the same price as the one you ordered for a decent tip.

~~~
uncoder0
Agreed, this is almost certainly meaningless 'virtue signaling' in practice...
My main question is who is the intended audience? The 1.8% of the planet that
is vegetarian?

edit: thanks for the downvote, was my comment and question offensive?

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craftyguy
> The 1.8% of the planet that is vegetarian

I was curious about this. According to wikipedia (take with salt), 21% of the
world population is vegetarian either by choice or necessity:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country)

There are some surprising results in the list, but the tl;dr is: India.

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seanmcdirmid
Even in India though, I think the percent of pure vegetarians is 50-60% (not
all Hindus completely abstain from meat like fish/chicken, and Muslims don’t).

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clay_the_ripper
As a vegetarian, this is pretty dumb. I could see not serving meat at the
company, but not allowing people to expense it? That’s just weird and feels
overly dranconian. If they are so concerned with environmental impact, do
their other company policies extend this level of control? (Require carbon
neutral transport, environmentally friendly electronics? What about building
materials? Furnishings?). I don’t think like they are going to convert anyone
to vegan/vegetarian this way, and probably encourage the opposite.

~~~
walrus01
I give it six months until they get sued by a Muslim employee. Culturally and
religiously eating meat is pretty much _required_ in Pakistan.

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themarkn
The article seems to suggest that religious needs etc would be met.

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mc32
Does one have to prove membership, or can one just claim it, I wonder? Will
they be asking to see tithing records?

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legostormtroopr
Sure, there are strong environmental and ethical reasons against eating meat.

But do we really want to applaud companies dictating what their employees do
in their down time?

Keep in mind this policy covers travel expenses, so if you have to travel for
work, you _must_ eat the vegetarian option while traveling or you will pay out
of pocket. Even if the only vegetarian option is fries, which is not uncommon.

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iamforreal
They're not dictating what employees can do on their own time, only what they
can use company resources for. You can always find a restaurant with good
vegan/veg options, although its admittedly harder in europe.

~~~
ggg9990
So you fly away from your family to spend the night closing a deal for your
employer and after a long day of meetings you sit down and have to order tofu
because the latest Richard Hendricks of the hour started dating a vegan. Fuck
this whole idea and fuck WeWork.

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ggg9990
This is how corporations are like autocratic governments. And the larger they
get, the harder it is to get away from their spheres of influence (if you’re a
software engineer in Seattle, by rejecting Amazon as an employer you wrote
yourself out of 90% of the open hiring reqs in the city).

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ggg9990
Can’t see how a company can do this and then meaningfully claim to care about
“diversity.” Also worth noting that this decision falls wholly on employees
and not at all on customers — best to abuse the people who will find it much
harder to quit you.

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andyidsinga
...and a new cohort of coworking spaces kickoff with the investor pitch "
'we're the wework of the coworking spaces with meat' industry"

:)

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guy_c
A few more details from an article in the Guardian:

\---

The Guardian US is based at one of the many offices run by WeWork in New York
City. Currently on the event schedule is a TGIM with Capital One event that
promises “mini doughnuts and bacon, bacon, bacon”. This is one of many events
promising to serve meat at WeWorks across the world – even as the policy was
being announced, at the Corrigan Station WeWork in Kansas City lunch is being
provided from Monk’s Roast Beef as part of “food truck Friday”, for example.

When the Guardian spoke to WeWork about whether these events would be
cancelled, a spokesperson said they would not, and clarified: “This policy
only applies to events paid for by WeWork. Members and employees are welcome
to bring in meat for meals, and members are welcome to serve meat at events
they host … we are working with vendors to align our commitment for previously
scheduled events, and meat will not be served at events hosted by WeWork
moving forward.”

\---

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SamReidHughes
Not paying for people to buy meat is perfectly reasonable. It's your money and
you can decide how you spend it. It's like not paying for birth control as
part of a company health plan.

But having a company event, a "summer camp," with no meat food options might
be incredibly fucked up.

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PhasmaFelis
> _It 's like not paying for birth control as part of a company health plan._

That's not reasonable either.

I don't understand why so many people think that "not actually illegal" is the
same thing as "perfectly acceptable."

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SamReidHughes
Well, I'm not paying for your birth control and I'm not buying you any meat
either. I don't see anything wrong with either, for the same reason.

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PhasmaFelis
And that's fine, as long as you're not running a company.

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jwilk
More discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695)

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1996
Meat is too expensive!

Ramen it will be. And it will teach them startup spirit!

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detaro
biggest discussion ended up here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695)

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PHGamer
hippies

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rayiner
Obligatory: "this is why Trump won."

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ggg9990
When I see stuff like this I do get about a 500 millisecond urge to vote for
Trump in 2020 just to give a big middle finger to people like this CEO. Then I
realize the cost of that middle finger and it’s too expensive for my tastes.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
That's pretty much why we got Trump in the first place. A lot of disgruntled
Bernie fans who decided they'd rather watch the world burn than accept the
lesser of two evils.

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pndd90
Good bye WeWork. Just another crazy idea by the environmentalists, right after
feeding babies with orange juice instead of milk. Btw, human DNA contains 50%
of proteins obtainable only from meat. Make your own conclusions.

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PhasmaFelis
This _is_ a dumb idea, but you're being just as ideological and silly as they
are. It's quite possible for modern humans to be healthy without eating meat.

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xor1
>"New research indicates that avoiding meat is one of the biggest things an
individual can do to reduce their personal environmental impact"

Not nearly as much impact as not having kids.

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toasterlovin
Meat vs. non-meat is not the right lens through which to judge the
environmental impact of your diet. Cost per calorie is.

For instance, whole chickens provide about about 1200 calories/dollar, whereas
leafy green vegetables all provide under 100 calories/dollar. That means there
is a 12x difference in the amount of resources required per calorie provided.
You can go on about the externalities of meat all you want, but a 12x
difference almost certainly makes up for them.

So if you switch from eating lots of meat to eating lots of leafy green
vegetables and berries, you probably aren't making much of a difference. The
better heuristic to follow is to just pay attention to how much your food
costs. Less money spent on food = lower environmental impact.

If you're interested, I go pretty deep down this rabbit hole here:
[http://www.thinkfundamental.org/why-kale-is-actually-
terribl...](http://www.thinkfundamental.org/why-kale-is-actually-terrible-for-
the-environment/)

~~~
iamforreal
What? No. This ignores subsidies, markup, shelf space, and that you probably
shouldn't be going for the cheapest calorie per dollar anyway. Following your
argument, we should all just eat pure sugar and butter.

I read your site, and it's all just FUD. You mention in passing how you'd need
to grow agriculture to feed animals anyway, and then completely ignore that
fact through the rest of your writing. You don't cite any actual environmental
numbers, pull some out of your ass, and then hand wave your way through your
position.

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toasterlovin
Look, calories per $ is a crude metric that I would not put forward as useful
for food items which are within 2x of each other in terms of calories per $.
But when you're talking about a 12x difference, I think you have to engage in
serious denial to dismiss it.

> You mention in passing how you'd need to grow agriculture to feed animals
> anyway, and then completely ignore that fact through the rest of your
> writing.

I'm not sure what you think I should have addressed about this, but I have had
people try to claim that meat cannot possibly be easier on the environment
than plants, since animals consume plants and there is energy loss in that
process, so I'll assume that's your objection. And the answer is that animals
are fed plants which provide a lot of calories per $. If you were to base your
diet on those plants (grains, essentially), then, yes, it would be better for
the environment than eating meat. But I was specifically pointing out that
there are classes of plants (leafy greens and berries) which are worse for the
environment than some meat (chicken). There are also classes of meat (red
meat; 50-400 calories per $) that are worse than certain classes of plants
(potatoes, grains, and nut & vegetable oils; 800-3000 calories per $).

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trentlott
The argument is thermodynamic: meat will never provide more calories than it
requires.

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TheCoelacanth
In the case of leafy greens, most of the energy will be tied up in cellulose
that will pass straight though a human digestive system undigested.

Any model that treats a human body as a perfectly efficient bomb calorimeter
will produce such inaccurate results as to be virtually useless.

