The Last Thanksgiving

Dear CEO,
As you debated your bottom lines, profit margins and shareholders, as you weighed out the benefits of opening your doors, phone lines, and web portals on a national holiday, did you consider what you were taking from your low level employees?  For many of them, you took their last Thanksgiving; you took from their families their last Thanksgiving. You may have even taken their very last holiday.  This year some of your employees will lose a parent, a sibling, a child, or their own life. 

Most of you did not join the rank and file in the trenches, you were home, ensconced in the glow and good cheer of your loved ones. You had one more holiday to look around the table and admire the domain you created.  You listened to petty arguments and laughed that your Mother always complains about the cranberry sauce your spouse makes wrong, watched your children struggle over the wishbone, and fell into a deep self satisfied sleep.

It is my hope that every low level employee that did not have a choice  about working yesterday gives you an account of their losses as the year progresses, that you are made to look in tear filled eyes as they tell you their mother had an unexpected heart attack and is gone. That you have to explain to a small child what "killed by a drunk driver" means and why Daddy is never coming home. That you have to explain why there was no last Thanksgiving. 

Justify your decision however you like. But know in your heart of hearts there, will be a price for your avarice.  Whether you ever hear what you have taken from the people you depend on, who's backs support your company from the bottom, your very foundation, rest assured, there will be a reckoning.