For context – The time of his firing was in June. He had gone through a divorce a month prior with someone that was truly the love of his life and she cheated on him with her former step brother (mother's ex-husband's son). As you can imagine, this took quite a toll on him and was life altering in a million ways. He informed his work of what was going on and his co-workers offered him support, 2 of his bosses offered him support, 1 of his bosses (an ex-military guy who wants you to know) was adamant that he needed to just move on and get over it because worse things can happen.
At the beginning of June, he put in for time off and it was granted. The part of the building he worked in he was the supervisor of and had 4 people working for him in that area. They could very easily handle the work while he was away and all encouraged it to happen. As did his 2 friendly bosses who approved his time off. He and several friends took a week long trip to Las Vegas as a getaway to attempt and get his mind off of things. When he returned and went into work on that Monday, the ex-military boss informed him that taking time off work to go on a week long trip to Vegas was unacceptable and told him he clearly had an attitude problem and didn't respect the company's time. He sent him home for the day and told him to not come in that Tuesday either. Instead, he was to write a 3 page essay to turn in on Wednesday explaining why his attitude was a problem and why he needed to get himself in a better state of mind to keep his work from suffering. When he went in on Wednesday he was called into a meeting where he turned in the essay to his ex-military boss. His 2 friendly bosses explained that they loved having him work there and enjoyed having him around. They wanted him to stay on. Mr ex-military informed all of them that his word would be what goes because he was higher ranking than the others and he decided to fire my relative on the spot for allowing his mental health to effect his work and the environment negatively. He told my relative that if things were truly that bad, he should have come to him and asked for help. My relative reminded him that he did exactly that and ex-military told him to pull up those boot straps.