my employee wants to be reimbursed for not eating when I buy everyone lunch

A reader writes:

I own a small (but growing) tax service. Recently I hired Cara, who moved to the area and was able to step right in, and during our busy season to boot.

Much of the year, we work 4-10 hour days with Fridays off. During tax season, we are busier and work 5-10 hour days. On Fridays, I buy the staff lunch. Because of dietary restrictions, allergies, etc., I let them order from whatever place they want, within reason on price, and pay for delivery or they turn in their receipt if they leave the building.

Cara does not eat lunch, maybe a can of Diet Coke but nothing else. I have asked multiple times if she would like to order and stressed that it is okay, thinking maybe she is new and doesn’t feel she has earned it. But no, she says she eats breakfast and then fasts during the day until supper.

Today she approached me and basically wants a reverse meal allowance. Whatever the average price is that the other employees are spending on lunch, she wants that money directly given to her because she isn’t getting “paid” the amount that the other employees are with their free lunch.

Honestly, I am at a loss for words so I am writing to you. What do you think, and what is the right response back to her?

Cara is missing the point: you’re buying your team lunch as a way to boost morale during your busy season. It’s not a cash exchange; it’s a gesture somewhere closer to hospitality, because food is a way of taking care of people. There’s a reason you’re doing it by providing lunch and not just Venmo’ing everyone 20 bucks every week.

It’s kind of like if you stopped at a coffeeshop on the way back from a client meeting and offered to buy her a drink and she said, “No, but can I have the money you would have spent on it?” You’d be taken aback and she’d be missing the point of what you were offering.

In both cases, the request makes it more transactional than it’s supposed to feel. On one hand, I can see how she got there — work is transactional (people trade their labor for money, and everything employers do to keep people happy and feeling appreciated is ultimately in service of the business’s goals, because it helps you retain good people who are reasonably content to be there). But she’s ignoring the human side of the transaction — the warmth and sociability of it — which is that you’re not just adding lunch money to people’s paychecks but rather are saying, “Let me do something hospitable to make our busy season more comfortable for you.” That’s what’s making her request come across as tone-deaf.

And workplaces frequently offer a range of perks that not everyone will use, and they’re not generally cutting people checks if they decline to use the subsidized gym or the free snacks in the kitchen.

As for how to respond … when you buy lunch on Fridays, are people mostly eating together or they working through lunch? If they’re mostly eating together, it would be very reasonable to explain that what you’re paying for is a morale-boosting group lunch; you’d love to have her join everyone but understand if it’s not her thing … but that you’re not handing out cash in lieu of attending, just like you wouldn’t give people a check if they didn’t attend the holiday party or a team happy hour.

And you could say that same thing even if people mostly work through lunch on those days too. That’s a reasonable stance to take, and you’d be perfectly justified in it. However, if that’s the scenario, I don’t think it’s outrageous to think about doing what she’s asked as a gesture toward her morale. I don’t love it, for all the reasons above — and you could end up in a situation where other people decide they’d prefer the cash too, and if enough people do that it will really alter what you set out to do — but if the point is make people feel taken care of, it could be worth broadening your definition of what that looks like.

Again, she’s out of sync with where you’re coming from, and it makes me wonder if she’s out of sync on other things too. But if she’s otherwise a good employee who you value and want to keep, it’s not the worst thing to decide it’s a small way to help her feel equitably treated.

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