A reader writes:
I have a small (but growing) tax service. Recently I hired Cara, who moved to the area and was able to jump right in during our busy season.
For most of the year, we work 4-10 hours a day with Fridays off. During tax season, we are busier and work 5-10 hour days. On Fridays, I buy the staff lunch. Due to dietary restrictions, allergies, etc., I let them order from wherever they want, depending on price, and pay for delivery or turn in their receipt if they leave the building.
Cara doesn’t eat lunch, maybe a can of Diet Coke but nothing else. I have asked several times if she would like to order and have insisted that it is okay, thinking maybe she is new and doesn’t feel she has earned it. But no, she says she has breakfast and then fasts during the day until dinner.
Today she contacted me and basically wants the food allowance reversed. Whatever the average price is that other employees are spending on lunch, she wants that money given directly to her because she is not getting “paid” the same amount that other employees do for their free lunch.
Honestly, I have no words so I am writing to you. What do you think, and what is the right response to that?
Cara is missing the point: You’re buying your team lunch to boost morale during their busy season. This is not a cash exchange; This is a sign close to hospitality, as food is a way of taking care of people. One reason to do this is so you’re providing lunch, not just giving 20 bucks a week to Venmo.
It’s like if you stopped at a coffeeshop on your 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’ll be taken aback and she’ll forget what you were offering.
In both cases, the request makes it more transactional than expected. On one hand, I can see how she got there – work. Is Transactional (people trade their labor for money, and anything employers do to keep people happy and feeling appreciated is ultimately in service of the goals of the business, because it helps you retain good people who are reasonably content to stay there). But she’s ignoring the human side of the transaction – the warmth and sociability of it – which is you. No Not just adding lunch money to people’s paychecks, but saying, “Let me show you some hospitality to make our busy season more comfortable for you.” This is why his request seems voiceless.
And workplaces often offer a variety of benefits that not everyone will use, and they generally don’t cut checks if people refuse to use the subsidized gym or the free snacks in the kitchen.
As far as responding… When you buy lunch on Friday, do people mostly eat together or do they work during lunch? If they are mostly eating together, it would be very appropriate to explain that what you are paying for is for a morale-boosting group lunch; You’ll love to include her with everyone, but understand if that’s not her thing… but that you’re not giving out cash in exchange for participating, just like you wouldn’t give people a check if they didn’t attend the holiday party or team happy hour.
And you can say the same thing when people mostly work through lunch in those days, too. This is a reasonable stance and you would be completely justified in it. However, if this is the scenario, I don’t think it is offensive Thinking about doing what he said as a gesture His Morale. I don’t like it for all the reasons above – and you can get into a situation where other people decide they also prefer cash, and if enough people do it it will really change what you set – but if the issue is that people feel they are being taken care of, then it might be worth broadening your definition of what that looks like.
Again, that’s out of sync with where you’re coming from, and it makes me wonder if he’s out of sync with other things too. But if she’s an otherwise good employee who you value and want to keep, it’s not a bad thing to decide that this is a small way of helping her feel treated fairly.
