Vegans Banned Me From Their Company-Funded Dinner Club. So I Started a ‘Spite-Burger’ Club and HR Approved It.

We all know that workplace harmony is built on small gestures of kindness and inclusion. Whether it’s remembering a colleague’s birthday or inviting everyone to lunch, the goal is to make people feel like they belong. After all, we spend more time with our coworkers than almost anyone else.

However, one man recently shared a story online that shows how quickly things can turn sour when a simple social club becomes a source of division and exclusion, proving that good manners sometimes get left at home.

The Incident

The story begins in a perfectly nice office where management encourages after-hours clubs to help employees unwind. A man explained that after a company merger, a few new vegan employees joined the team and, along with a long-time vegan colleague named Jane, decided to start a company-subsidized Vegan Dinner Club. At first, no one batted an eye. It sounded like a lovely idea.

The trouble started when the club submitted its official rules to HR. The man was stunned to read their statement of purpose, which declared, “It is to be understood that this club will only accept those individuals who identify as either vegans, vegetarians, or pescatarians. Those who do not subscribe to one of these three lifestyles will not be able to join the club.” He and his colleagues were baffled. Why would meat-eaters be barred from a club where only vegan food would be served anyway? It felt needlessly “exclusionary and divisive.”

Feeling snubbed, he and some other coworkers decided to fight fire with fire. They started a “Burger and Steak Club,” also company-subsidized. Of course, Jane and her group immediately filed a complaint with HR, calling the new club “exclusionary, offensive to their lifestyle.”

In a spectacular display of hypocrisy, they argued that eating meat was not a “lifestyle” in the same way veganism was. HR, seeing the fairness of the situation, approved the new club anyway, but the damage was done. Jane now refuses to even speak to her former friend.

The Internet Reacts

Once the story hit the internet, it sparked a fierce debate, with thousands of people weighing in on the workplace drama. Commenters quickly fell into a few distinct camps.

The first, and largest, group was the “Absolutely Not” crowd, who were furious on the man’s behalf. They felt the vegan club’s exclusionary rule was the original offense. One person put it bluntly: “If Jane hadn’t insisted upon making the Vegan Dinner Club exclusionary, none of the rest would have happened.”

Another pointed out the flawed logic, asking, “Surely if you were vegan, you would want to put other people onto vegan food also??” They saw the initial rule as elitist and completely contrary to the spirit of workplace camaraderie.

Then there was the “Devil’s Advocate” camp, which tried to see things from Jane’s perspective. They argued that veganism is more than a diet; it’s a deeply held moral belief. For them, the club was likely intended as a “safe space.” One commenter explained, “Vegans/vegetarians often feel excluded from group meals, and that they are often mocked for their diet, they want to make sure that this club is a safe place for them.” Another added that they probably wanted to discuss their lifestyle “without feeling like your belief system is on trial.”

Finally, many people landed in the “Everyone is Acting Like a Child” camp. They were appalled by the whole situation, seeing it as incredibly immature for a professional environment. “Are you…are you living in an episode of The Office?” one person joked. “I didn’t realize that grown adults were this petty and ridiculous in real life workplaces.”

Many in this group placed the blame squarely on HR for allowing any exclusionary clubs to begin with, arguing they created the division. As one person sighed, “It’s amazing that this is how real people are behaving at their jobs.”

The Etiquette Verdict

Let’s be perfectly clear: what happened here was a failure of basic workplace courtesy, and it started with the Vegan Dinner Club. While anyone is entitled to their lifestyle choices, creating a club with a velvet rope is simply bad form, especially when it’s subsidized by the company for the benefit of all employees. It sends a message of “you’re not one of us,” which has no place in a collaborative environment.

While creating a rival club might seem a tad petty, it was a direct and, frankly, understandable response to being excluded. The Golden Rule of office life is to foster inclusion, not cliques.

Your Thoughts

Now I turn it over to you. Do you think the vegan club was right to set boundaries for its members, or was their exclusionary rule a breach of office etiquette that invited retaliation?