Meta’s mistake was not issuing the funds as a DoorDash or Instacart credit. By my calculation this stipend amounted to an over $18k/year bonus per person. I’m not justifying the abuse, but Meta certainly wasn’t very smart in the way they rolled this out. Someone further up the food chain made a very bad decision.
Where I used to work, they gave you up to $500 when you retired so you could have a nice family event but since alcohol wasn’t allowed, it created a lot of work with receipts and claims. Finally, someone with a brain came up with, let’s just give every person retiring a flat $750 and call it good. No reimbursements, receipts etc.