Alex had demonstrated great bravery and took risk when approaching the manager. Sometimes people are in such bad state, that they don’t have enough strenght / condfidence / … to even ask. It is on the management to monitor what’s going on and to keep communication channels open, even to initiate similar talks when they notice that something is going on. Alex’s boss has demonstrated certain level of empathy, but it is more like he is going again through his experience. What would happen if Alex had different problem?
And this period of waiting for reply must have been really stressful – so it could additionally add to Alex’s burden.
It is nice that it was possible to accomodate Alex’s needs, but I feel that the company has room to grow in terms of accomodating employee’s needs. I can relate to this situation – we all have times when we need understanding and sometimes even tolerating me being late 10 or 15 minutes due to personal reasons leads to putting extra effort and doing things to the best of my abilities.