At 64, Alfredo Lupi, a janitor at a factory in Graffignana, an industrial town southeast of Milan, was less than three years away from his retirement, a threshold that was at once incredibly close but impossibly far.
A cognitive impairment that he had almost since birth was making his job more difficult by the day. The condition was too debilitating for him to work without discomfort, but quitting would have been hard to afford without a pension.
That's where his co-workers came in.
One evening earlier this month, after his shift ended, the employees of the Senna Inox factory gathered to unveil a surprise for Lupi. He could retire early. In fact, he could retire now.
Bewildered at first, Lupi slowly understood. "You gave me my pension," he said, visibly moved. "Thank you."
Technically, his colleagues gave him something else: vacation days. They had transferred some of their own allotment — some gave more days, some gave less, but all gave something. That allowed him to stop working but meant he could remain on the books at the Senna Inox factory and collect a salary until he reached the retirement age of 67.
"In the last few months, he was visibly tired and had a hard time working," said Piera, one of Lupi's colleagues, who declined to give her last name because she did not want publicity for herself. "This was a collective effort. We all felt it was not fair that if he quit, he would have to stay home with no paycheck for two years."
The practice of donating personal vacation days to colleagues in need is increasingly popular in Italy. In recent years, the story of a mother who was given the equivalent of three years to take care of her disabled son, as well as tales of time off donated to hospital workers who have young children and no time to spend with them, have made headlines in Italy.