[unluky]

At my last job we had a great employee that fell on some hard luck and had a mini stroke. I always liked him and when I walked the floor I always chatted with him. He was getting better, but had used all his vac and sick time up and was right at the end of his FMLA time (different rules back then). I was on the HR committee and heard them talking about options for him, but it was getting down to where he was going to run out of vac and we have to terminate him and then rehire him when he could return to work. He was OK with that, but I hate him not to have a check coming in.

When I asked more, it turned out the reason he was running out of vac was he was going to have to cash in the last 4 weeks he had to pay his insurance premiums. We paid employees 100%, but he had his family on it as well and we only paid 60% of that.

After the meeting I went and spoke to the controller and paid his insurance for 3 months for him which allowed him to keep his vac which kept him getting paid for 4 more weeks and that got it enough that he made it back to work and we never had to terminate him.

We never told him as I know it would have embarrassed him, so we told him we "figured out a way around it" and he was happy.

I was doing very well at the time and life had been good to me, so I felt like it was my time to help someone in a tight spot. I have left, but he is still there and still a great employee. Super good guy and doing well now.