Watching office workers eat lunch is a thing on TikTok

For many office workers, the typical “lunch hour” is a sad desk lunch of a sandwich or slop bowl supplemented by a rotating schedule of snacks. According to a poll conducted by Yahoo and YouGov, half of employed Americans regularly eat at their workstations. 

And now they’re sharing it all on TikTok. 

Office snack content is hooking viewers online with captions such as “WIEIAD” (what I eat in a day) and “what I ate at my 8-4,” featuring office workers’ time-stamped eating schedules. Employees post montages of their morning coffee and breakfast of choice, followed by a time-lapse video of a variety of snacks and beverages consumed at their desk. Some videos have voice-overs, some have light jolly music, and others keep it monotonous, complete with keyboard ASMR.

And if the worker’s employer offers free food (certainly a step above your tuna on rye in a brown paper bag), they’re sharing that, too.

“Rating everything I ate at the office today,” one TikTok creator who works at the tech company Carta posted. First, she helps herself to free coffee, followed by a Cocojune yogurt with blueberries. For lunch, she shows a plate of chicken katsu and a range of beverages, including a lime Diet Coke and a Spindrift. The day ends with a protein bar. Her content frequently racks up hundreds of thousands of views. In a separate video, she provided a close-up of the snack selection, due to popular demand. “My show is on,” one user commented. Another wrote that they’d love to see “how much money this saves you eating at work every day.”

A day of office lunches may not sound like thrilling source material for social media, but clips of what people are eating at work are an extremely popular content niche. There are more than 1.1 million videos on TikTok with the hashtag #wieiad, varying from corporate snack selections to what workers pack for their lunch from home.

Why these mundane videos are oddly satisfying to watch, who’s to say? For some, it may serve as inspiration; for others, it can give a sense of a company’s workplace culture and perks. Perhaps we are simply nosy creatures. 

Free food at the office has long been a popular perk used to entice employees. In 2022, Meta eventually barred employees from bringing in Tupperware because too many had been stocking up on free food and taking it home with them. 

After the pandemic and the end of remote working left many companies seeking ways to entice workers back to the workplace, office snacks and free lunches were among the incentives employers turned to. Because who doesn’t love a free lunch? (With the additional benefit for employers of keeping workers at their desks longer.)

A recent change in tax law may throw a wrench in the WIEIAD trend, though: Starting in 2026, “meals provided for the employer’s convenience, such as on-site or cafeteria meals, will no longer qualify for a tax deduction,” according to professional services firm UHY. Some have suggested the change could apply to office snacks and coffee, too.

Think of all the potential office mukbangs we’d be deprived of.

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