The unlucky are nothing more than a frame of reference for the lucky. You are unlucky, so I may know that I am. Unfortunately the lucky never realizes they are lucky until it’s too late. Take yourself for instance; yesterday you were better off than you are off today but it took today for you to realize it. But today has arrived and it’s too late. You see? People are never happy with what they have. They want what they had, or what others have. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Hi there,

I’ve been going to my neighborhood Supercuts location for the past 6 months and my expectations have been consistently met (if not exceeded) by one employee in particular (referred to as “Jill” in this email). I have yet to try any other haircut locations around the area as I’ve never been let down.

Jill and I have built up an excellent rapport, sharing both lighthearted and emotional news (I was elated to share that I’d gotten a promotion and a new job, but sad to share that my grandfather had been hit by a car while on his morning walk). It’s this attention and care placed on me, the customer, that keeps me coming back to the Supercuts brand.

Although it may be against your policy to comment, I’d like some clarification on something I’ve recently discovered. Jill, the employee that keeps bringing me to Supercuts, has been with your company for over 20 years, and was recently let go from a full time position as a result of taking unapproved time off. While I completely understand the reasoning behind the policy (and have worked in many companies where this was the case), I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.

Jill’s mother recently passed away, so she took time off to attend the funeral. A few months later, her father also passed away and, for whatever reason, her request for time off wasn’t approved. Although I’m fairly confident Jill had enough vacation and or sick leave accrued to cover her absence, as a result of taking unapproved time off, she was fired.

Jill was fortunate enough to be rehired on as a part time employee, but has lost all of the benefits she’s accrued over her 20 years with your company. I’m withholding Jill’s real name out of the fear that further retribution during a particularly difficult time in her life will occur.

I feel that Jill might have had trouble fully explaining the situation, and I’m hoping articulating it for her through this channel will lead to some mutually beneficial resolution for both Supercuts and the employee.

I know that I can’t support a company that will knowingly cut off an employee after 20 years of service for failing to get approved time off to attend their parents’ funerals. Deaths in a family aren’t planned. Regardless of policy, an exception should have been (and can still be) made for Jill to attend both of her parents’ funerals regardless of how close together they were. Should the decision to not reinstate Jill’s fulltime position and accrued benefits stand, I can assure you that you’ll lose not only all of Jill’s clients, but I’ll use any resources available to me to share this employee’s story with as many people that will listen. Although I don’t have an outlet through traditional media, I interact with social media on a daily basis and know that this story would gain traction with various audiences.

I look forward to hearing back from you and hope that you can clear up the misunderstanding about this employee!

Sincerely,

-Stephen

Sure puts things in perspective. Losing both of your parents, your job, and possibly being unable to afford a simple quality of life anymore. My problems aren’t that bad at all.

Small Team, Big Impact: The People Behind Photos (video above) from Facebook’s “Life at Facebook” page

Whoa! According to the above video Facebook is currently (as of three months ago) storing roughly 19,000 Terabytes of photos.

The video states that they’re growing at a rate of 1 billion new photos a month (2,000 every second). Based on a VERY rough guesstimate of 500K a picture (half a megabyte) which doesn’t include the various “versions” of a file that they store including thumbnail, “medium” and the full size, that works out to an additional 476 Terabytes in a month. To give you a sense of size, that’s approximately the space required to store 142,606,336 songs… which is increasing each month.

It must be mindblowing to see the infrastructure that has to be in place to not only handle that number of photos but to also accommodate the explosive growth! Anyone at Facebook want to give me a tour?