With the cost of living on the rise, the importance of staying healthy and holding down a job is more intense than ever before. In the event of a crisis, we often don’t feel like we can afford the time off. That was the case for a man named Andreas Graf who was living in Hesse, Germany. Graf worked at a design company called Siedel before getting terrible news.
His three-year-old son Julian had been diagnosed with leukemia.
Before anything else, Graf decided to file for all his vacation time to stay home and care for his son.
Although the company granted him the time off, it quickly came and went—and Graf was unsure what would happen to him next. “First I took all of my vacation time, because my family and I didn’t know what was going to happen next,” Graf said. “Then after that, I thought: vacation is going to be over soon, and then you’re going to be laid off or fired.”
Fortunately, what happened next took Graf by surprise.
After his vacation time ran out, the company’s PR manager, Pia Meier, decided to call in favors to help Graf get more time off.
In a public area at the factory, she put up a time sheet where other employees could donate their extra vacation hours to Graf so that he could stay home while his son underwent chemotherapy and started on the road to recovery. The sheet was up for two weeks, during which they got more than 700 signatures.
As a result of everyone’s efforts, Graf’s employees donated more than 3,300 hours of overtime to him!
Above all, Graf was floored by everyone’s kindness in an impossible situation.
As a result of his colleagues banding together, Graf was able to take almost an entire year off to stay with his son during his recovery. Fortunately, things have taken a positive turn for the family. Julian is soon turning five and Graf will gradually be returning to work. Above all, this story shows just how powerful it can be when we band together to help one another out in times of need. Although Graf’s situation with his son was frightening, the kindness of his coworkers allowed him to see it through.
A special thanks to everyone who was generous enough to help out Andreas and Julian!
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