A post accusing me of feeding my employees free lunches worse than pig feed goes viral online.

However, none of them know that the daily free lunches are all catered from a five-star hotel at 100 dollars per head.

The entire internet goes crazy, calling me names and accusing me of being an evil boss. Even my co-founder, Dustin Jager, texts me and says, "Maybe we should go with what the employees want and change it to a meal allowance plan instead."

I harden my heart and send out a company-wide announcement.

"In response to everyone's pursuit of healthy eating and the right to choose their own lunches, the company has decided to discontinue the free lunch program.

"A meal reimbursement plan will be introduced instead, effective immediately, with a daily limit of 20 dollars per person per day. All reimbursements will be calculated at the end of the month with the presentation of valid receipts."

As soon as the announcement is made, the company's chat groups immediately go berserk.

My name was Rachel Summers.

The gaming company that I founded, Cosmo Network & Tech, was well-known amongst the people in the industry for being the "dream company" to work at, simply because of our generous employee benefits.

They were exceptionally envious of the free lunch buffet program that I had insisted on for every employee in the company, amounting to 100 dollars per head per day, in collaboration with a five-star hotel in the center of the city.

Every day at lunch time, the admin department would wheel in carts of the catered dishes through the office floor, smelling absolutely heavenly.

"Rachel! The menu today is a five-cheese lasagna!"

"Oh my god, is that tiramisu for dessert?"

"I'm so in love with this company!"

I loved listening to the happy cheers and quips from my employees at this time. It made me feel as though I was getting closer and closer to building the dream company that I had always wanted to join when I was younger.

However, things changed when the new cleaner, Lilian West, joined the company.

She was close to 50 years old and was pretty good at her job. She looked honest and straightforward too, but she always acted weirdly whenever lunchtime rolled around.

She would never take the more expensive dishes at the catered buffet. Instead, she would always make sure to take the other alternatives, like sandwiches and salads, and place them on her lunch plate.

Then, she would produce her own food containers and fill them to the brim with the more expensive food to bring home.

At first, I thought that she was just being savvy and bringing home the food that she couldn't finish for her dinner.

A while later, I learned from Mandy Tate, someone from the admin department, that Lilian was bringing home the food for her son, who was in college.

I didn't think much of it. After all, this was an employee benefit, and it didn't matter how they utilized it as long as they could enjoy it themselves.

However, the truth eventually became distorted.

I began hearing Lilian's loud grumbling in the staff pantry and the toilets.

"The food provided is just too oily and greasy! None of them is any healthier than the food you can prepare at home for yourself!

"Yeah, Ms. Summers probably doesn't know it because she's younger than us, but elderly people like us prefer food that's lighter on the stomach and palate.

"Did you know that a burrito from the shop downstairs only costs 15 dollars? It's delicious, and I bet that the extra money saved from the catering could be used for other purposes instead."

Lilian would always gossip only with the younger employees who had mostly just graduated from college and still hadn't been working at the company for a long time.

Soon, I realized that there was a new group chat amongst the employees, and it was named "The Lunch Inspectors". The admin of the group chat was none other than Lilian herself.

Every day, new chat messages would appear in the group, complaining about the food that had been served at lunch that day.

"Ugh, it's chicken parm again today. I'm so sick of it!"

"The stir-fried cauliflower has seen better days. It's so mushy and yucky."

"I bet Ms. Summers cut down on the lunch budget. How could all this food be worth 100 dollars per person?"

I chanced upon the conversation in the group from an employee's computer monitor while I was passing by. I felt a little frustrated when I read the messages, but I treated them as just employee gossip and didn't take them to heart.

Yet, it was my leniency that fueled Lilian's nerves after that.

This afternoon, Lilian came knocking at my door and walked in with a group of young employees behind her. They were some of the most active participants in the lunch group chat.

"Ms. Summers."

Lilian then put on the airs of someone advocating for justice and demanded, "We are here on behalf of the rest of the company employees to suggest a proposition to you."

"What is it?" I asked, setting down my documents.

"We think that it's better if you cancel the free lunch buffet program and change it to a meal allowance plan instead," she said. "We've done the calculations, and the most a meal outside would cost here is not more than 20 dollars.

"So, you can just give us a meal allowance of, say, 60 dollars per day. That'll save the company more money, and we'll also have the freedom to choose our meals and make them healthier as well."

I smiled.

"Lilian, I have a contract with the hotel to provide meals worth at least 100 dollars per head every day, and I believe that it provides more value than the 60-dollar allowance you are requesting.

"I'm only doing this because I don't wish for my employees to have to fuss about thinking about what to have for lunch every day on top of all the work they have to do. Besides, the food is also of higher quality."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Lilian's expression fell at once.

She suddenly raised her voice and yelled at the door, "Ms. Summers is treating us worse than slaves! We're all just office workers who want to save a few pennies on healthier lunches! And yet, she's forcing us to eat her greasy, disgusting pig feed every single day!

"She's only trying to keep up her reputation of being a 'good person'! She doesn't care about us at all!"

Lilian's shrill voice was loud, and it reverberated across the entire office floor.

Quite a number of employees stuck their heads out of their cubicles and looked in my direction.

The employees didn't look concerned at all. Instead, they just looked like they were eagerly watching and waiting for more drama to unfold.

I watched as Lilian continued making a loud fuss in front of me, then I looked at the other employees watching us and giving her their silent permission to do so.

Suddenly, I felt a wave of disappointment engulf me.

I thought that Lilian would be done once she finished throwing a fit in my office. However, I soon realized that I had severely underestimated her.

The next afternoon, I saw an intern, Amber Nolan, who had only just joined us not too long ago, taking a few photos and videos of the lunch that was served that day.

Lilian was right next to her, pointing at the food and saying, "That's right, that angle is perfect. Make sure you catch all the grease floating on it. And zoom in on the fatty deposits still on the chicken. Yes, perfect."

Amber listened to everything she said and filmed the video as told.

I frowned and walked up to her. I asked, "What are you filming?"

Amber got a huge fright and hurriedly hid her phone behind her.

Lilian, on the other hand, faced me with a calm expression and said, "She's just filming her lunch for fun, Ms. Summers. She's vlogging about her life."

I looked at her for a bit and said nothing more. Still, my gut told me that there was more to what met the eye.

As I expected, a video suddenly went viral that very night. The caption read, "Heartless boss feeds employees pig feed and gaslights them afterward."

The video thumbnail was Lilian's "honest and straightforward" face.

Meanwhile, the video showed all the food that the hotel had prepared for lunch this morning. The video used a special filter and was filmed at an angle that showed all the greasiest spots in the food.

They even recorded my conversation with them earlier when I patiently explained things to them and purposely distorted and edited my voice so that I sounded prude and snobbish.

"I'm only doing this because…the food is of higher quality…don't have to fuss…"

My voice sounded harsh and hypocritical after their edits. The video then cut to Lilian's upset face afterward. She said, "We just wanted to be a little savvy and bring our own food from home, so we suggested a meal allowance plan instead…

"But instead, the boss accused us of being ungrateful and of biting the hand that fed us. We're all just lowly employees here, so of course we'd never dare to refute her words! The only thing we can do now is to grin and bear with all this disgusting pig feed every day at lunch."

The video then ended with a few screenshots of the lunch chat group, all showing the employees' complaints and dissatisfaction about the food provided to them.

The comments exploded with feedback from the netizens.

"This boss is so disgusting! How much more fake could she be?"

"Did she say the food was worth 100 dollars? Haha! I bet it's not worth more than 10 bucks!"

"Unionize and fight for your rights! Expose disgusting companies like these!"

In a short while, our company name, address, and even my photos were doxxed and posted in the comments for everyone to see.

The company phone was immediately spammed with hostile spam calls, and everyone wouldn't stop cursing and dragging us further into the mud.

Some of our ongoing business partners even sent me text messages, inadvertently questioning me about the controversy.

I was so mad that I couldn't stop shaking with fury.

I quickly got Mandy to prepare a copy of our contract with the hotel and our monthly billed receipts so that we could make a proper statement on our official website and social media channels to refute the accusations.

While busy with the PR work, my phone suddenly buzzed with a text message from Dustin Jagger, my co-founder.

He was my college friend, and we had gone through plenty of hardships together before finally bringing the company to where it was now.

I thought that Dustin was here to comfort me.

When I tapped into his message, however, I was shocked.

"Rach, I saw the video, and the people are going crazy commenting about it.

"Don't you think we should just do as they say? It's not going to look good for the company's finances if this controversy keeps snowballing."

I stared at the text message for at least a whole minute.

This made me feel even more upset than the hundreds and thousands of malicious comments on the internet about me.

Dustin was someone I trusted the most. We had made a pact to build the best and the biggest gaming company many years ago.

But now, he was asking me to compromise and cave in to the company's ingrates who were demanding a few additional dollars.

I didn't reply to him.

For some reason, I tapped into the viral video again and refreshed the comments.

At once, the most popular comment appeared before my eyes. It said, "I'm with the employees, and the boss must apologize! She's just a capitalist, and she should never be this arrogant!"

I took a closer look at the people who liked this comment, and I immediately saw a very familiar profile picture in the list.

It was Dustin.

He had used his personal profile to like this comment under the viral video.

I didn't sleep that night.

When the night sky turned dusty gray, and a ray of sunshine finally cracked through the skies, I had finally thought everything through.

The Rachel Summers who had dreamed of building a company that felt like home and treated everyone like family had been too naive and stupid.

Families would never betray each other like this.

I took out my phone and sent Dustin a text message.

"You're right. I was wrong."

Dustin replied at once.

"It's good that you've thought things through. I'm only saying this for the company's sake. So, what are you planning to do now? Make a public apology? Then, give out the meal allowance?"

I read his response and replied with only two words.

"Company meeting."

…

At 9:00 am, I informed all of my employees to attend an urgent meeting.

Lilian and the group of young employees who started this filed into the conference room and sat in the first row of seats with a smug look on their faces.

They whispered among each other with victorious smiles on their lips.

When I walked into the conference room, the entire place immediately quieted down. Everyone's eyes were on me. Some of them looked at me empathically, some gleefully, and some eagerly, like they were watching a soap opera.

I went up to the front podium and lowered my head in apology.

"I apologize."

Everyone immediately began to murmur.

Lilian's mouth broke into an even wider smile. Amber, who was seated next to her, had even taken out her phone to record this "historic" moment.

"I have acted arbitrarily over the past few years and ignored everyone's needs. I have been denying you the freedom of choice for your meals. I have reflected on my mistakes, and I admit that I was wrong."

The murmurs only got louder.

Someone had already whipped out their calculator to estimate how much extra money they would be receiving if they got an extra 60 dollars per day for their meal allowance.

I looked at the gleeful, greedy expressions on my employees' faces and continued, "As proof of my sincerity, and to respond to everyone's demands, I have decided to go with the public opinion and make some changes to the rules."

After pausing for a moment, I made my first announcement.

"Firstly, the free lunch buffet program that has been ongoing for the past two years is now cancelled, effective immediately."

The entire conference room erupted in wildly excited cheers. Lilian was exceptionally ecstatic, clapping louder than the rest.

I raised my hands and asked them to quiet down. Then, I made my next announcement.

"Moving forward, the lunch system will be changed to a reimbursement system. The company respects the wishes of the employees who want free will, and so, you will be free to choose whatever you want to have for lunch."

There was another round of loud applause from the employees.

I looked at their expectant gazes and said, "Everybody will be entitled to claim a maximum of 20 dollars a day."

The cheers and applause stopped at once. Their joyful expressions immediately froze on their faces.

Lilian's expression immediately fell. Her jaw dropped to the floor at my words.

I ignored all of their responses and continued with the third rule I was putting into place.