Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly fired around 24 employees at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 (£19) meal credit to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent and wine glasses had.

The tech company, which is worth £1.2 trillion and also owns messaging platform WhatsApp, was said to have fired staff last week after an investigation found staff had abused the system, including sending groceries home when they weren’t in the office.

They included an unnamed worker making $400,000 who said he used his food credit to buy household goods and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.

On the anonymous messaging platform Blind, they wrote: “On days when I didn’t eat at the office, like when my husband was cooking or I was having dinner with friends, I thought I shouldn’t waste the meal credit.”

The employee admitted the violation when approached as part of a human resources investigation into the practice and was later fired. “It was almost surreal that this was happening,” the person wrote, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.

It was discovered that some employees had also spent the credits on other household items such as acne pads. Employees who only occasionally broke the rules were reprimanded but were allowed to keep their jobs, the newspaper reported.

Free food has long been one of the perks of working for big tech companies.

Meta, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, typically feeds its employees free from the cafeterias of its larger offices, including its sprawling headquarters in Silicon Valley.

But those in smaller locations get daily credits for ordering food through delivery services like UberEats and Grubhub. The daily allowance includes $20 for breakfast, $25 for lunch and $25 for dinner.

In 2022, the company caused uproar among staff after it decided to delay daily free dinner service at its Silicon Valley campus by half an hour to 6:30 p.m. as part of broader cuts. That meant fewer employees would be eating on campus when they caught the last shuttle that left the campus at 6 p.m. It also became more difficult for employees to stock up on free food to take home as leftovers.

Other big tech companies are also cracking down on employee benefits. Google began limiting fitness classes and the frequency of laptop replacements last year. The company also reportedly imposed stricter restrictions on office supplies such as staplers and tape, requiring employees to borrow items from the front desk instead.

Meta’s decision to lay off employees last week whom the company accused of abusing their benefits came as its bosses launched a new restructuring plan that would see the firing and relocation of employees from its WhatsApp and Instagram divisions as well as the augmented reality department Reality Labs.

The company has just undergone large-scale job cuts, with Zuckerberg ordering 21,000 layoffs in 2022 and 2023. Meta employed around 70,799 people at the end of June this year.

Meta has been contacted for comment.