I used to be proud of a policy that “saved” my company a few hundred thousand a year.
Turns out the real price was two little girls shaking in the snow, asking me if their mom had forgotten them.

That night I stepped out of my black SUV in a $3,000 coat, heading to a strategy meeting. Under a flickering streetlight, I saw them: maybe six years old, matching rabbit backpacks, thin coats, boots soaked through.

“Sir… we’ve been waiting since yesterday,” one of them said. “Do you think our mom forgot us?”

They showed me a crumpled note: “Wait at the front gate. Apt 12F.”
We went up together. New tenants. Annoyed faces. “Previous lady skipped rent, left a mess. Not our problem.” Door slammed.

Downstairs, the guard tossed me an envelope: late rent notices, a scribbled forwarding address… and a pay stub. My company’s logo on top. Mercer Hospitality Group. Name: Camila Reyes. Status in our system: terminated after injury. Medical leave: denied under the very policy I’d signed.

I took the twins to my hotel. Got them hot chocolate, a room, clean sheets. While they slept curled around their backpacks, I sat in the staff office and pulled up Camila’s file. Every “cost-saving” decision was there in black and white. Suddenly it felt like blood.

With Child Protective Services, we traced her to a public restroom, then to a county hospital. She’d collapsed on the way to work, dehydrated, malnourished, leg damaged again. When she woke up and saw me, she whispered, “You’re the boss who cut me off… why are you here?”

“Because those rules put you here,” I said. “And your girls made sure I couldn’t look away anymore.”

Now her daughters sleep in a warm apartment with working heat, rent covered. Our policies are being rewritten from the ground up.

Tell me honestly: if you were in my place… would you have walked past those girls and let “the system” handle it? 🥲
Comment what you’d do.