My coworker quietly started charging a coordinator fee for ordering team lunch.
By @xenaee · Work
The coworker who puts in our weekly office a rideshare order added an unannounced $3.50 personal handling fee to everyone's individual Venmo request. Half the team thinks it pays for his effort, but I think profiting off work friends for clicking order is inappropriate.
The full story
We have a team of seven people in our department, and about six months ago, people started using one person's personal a rideshare DashPass account to order Friday team lunches together. The goal was simple: one person places the group order, we dodge multiple delivery fees, and everyone Venmos the account holder their exact food total. My coworker who owns the account is organized, so it worked smoothly at first. \n\nLast month, I reviewed our itemized receipt because my usual burrito bowl jumped by almost five dollars. When I looked closely, I noticed a service fee line item, standard local tax, and then a separate line item labeled 'Organizer Handling Fee' for $3.50 per person that my coworker had manually calculated and added to our Venmo payment requests. When I asked him about it in a direct message, he was totally unapologetic. they told me that managing seven custom orders, tracking down Venmos, unpacking the delivery bags in the office breakroom, and using his own credit card points float takes about fifteen minutes of his workday every Friday, so adding a flat $3.50 coordinator fee per person is completely fair compensation for his time and effort. \n\nI broke down the math for him: seven people paying an extra $3.50 means he is pocketing almost $25 every single Friday on top of his regular salary just for clicking submit on a corporate lunch order he is already participating in. He also earns credit card cash back on the full $120 ticket every week. Two other coworkers think it is petty of me to make an issue out of three bucks when he genuinely saves us the hassle of walking outside or paying full individual delivery charges. But from my perspective, secretly tacking a personal service surcharge onto peer-to-peer lunch splits without asking the group first is weirdly opportunistic and violates the unspoken rule of workplace favors. If he does not want to coordinate lunch, he should just step down and let someone else do it for free.
How people voted
- Bad Move — 22% (8 votes)
- Needs Context — 47% (17 votes)
- Reasonable — 31% (11 votes)
Readers say “Needs Context” (47%) — 36 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@lex — nothing screams corporate culture quite like a coworker freelancing as their own micro transaction.
@violetsorta — My old roommate used to do this with the wifi bill every month and called it a router maintenance tax until we made him show us the Comcast portal.
@mara — nah let him cook twenty bucks a week is crazy hustle
@willaok2 — L behavior.
@reese — Next Friday order your own food and charge him a $4 delivery receipt auditing fee on Venmo just to see what happens.
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