sometimes theres a man...

sometimes people who you know are totally cool shock you with a dimension that brings their cool to a whole 'nother level.
i work in a job where i get a limited amount of vacation days (yes, like everyone).
the thing is that i do practice some relative observance of jewish holidays - the main one being that i dont work on them. some, i observe more or less in various ways, but as Big Gedaliah Goomber said, "ain't gonna work on saturdays (and other holidays)"

so back to our story. this is the first job i've had where having the jew-days off wasn't set in the work schedule, mainly because i've always worked at jewish places. easy.
starting at my current job, i had to tell them that theres all these days that i can't work, and the snap-solution on their part was to tell me that i would have to take them as vacation days.
that sucked. really sucked, cause it meant that i would now have about 2 vacation days for this entire year.
then, recently, i found out that rather than take them as vacation days, i could take them as "unpaid leave" days. ok. so i wouldn't get paid, but at least i wouldn't have to sacrifice my vacation. great.
moving on.
my new manager, in talking to hr in order to figure out how to process the "unpaid leave" days, made his feelings known that it just doesn't seem right/cool to 'punish' someone for observing a religous holiday, by either forcing them to lose vacation or pay.
i will interject here, and say that i have never ever ever heard of a manager or the like who expressed this sentiment when they were dealing with someone i know who was in a similar situation. that is, the original idea of losing vacation days or money seems to be standard.

the hr person and my manager went over all the relevant documents together and found that the rules in question could (and in the spirit of this workplace, should) be read to say that as long as it can be worked out in a fair fashion, taking religious days should not be a punishable offense.
well. he called me in his office, told me this, and i obviously said that i'm more than happy to come in early, do extra stuff as needed to make up for the hours as much as possible.

i know that this may not be interesting to anyone, and indeed is not 'cool stuff for people', but this is one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.
someone went out of his way for me to fix something that was truly wrong.
when this happens, it should be recognized, and now i have done so.