Thanks Lisa, Or How Far Kind Gestures Go

by Tinu

I was hav­ing the sec­ond of two really crappy bad days in a row. Then Lisa Byrne (who does awe­some things, includ­ing Social Zest & DC Event Junkie) sent these flow­ers over to brighten my day. The card was also signed by pal Shashi Bel­lamkonda, and on behalf of the rest of the team I usu­ally work with over at Net­work Solu­tions.

Now, this was a lovely ges­ture, no mat­ter how you look at it. But it was excep­tion­ally so because — yes­ter­day was one of those days where I really needed some­one to just acknowl­edge that what I do isn’t just a job to me, or how I get food on the table for myself and my fam­ily. I have other tal­ents and abil­i­ties — there’s a lot of ways I could just make this whole thing about money and just be done with it.

Have you ever had one of those days where you got in a tough spot because you weren’t will­ing to do some­thing wrong to some­one to get ahead?

That’s the kind of day I was having.

I didn’t want a medal for not going along with every­one else. I didn’t even want to tell any­one about it.

I just wanted to feel — not alone. Not unheard.

So any­way, back to the flow­ers from the Net­work Solu­tions team.

I gave you part of the back­ground to illus­trate that this wasn’t just a nice ges­ture from friends.

Hon­estly, I don’t know those guys as well as I’d like to yet. We’re much more than acquain­tances. But it’s not like we go to each other’s kid’s par­ties and wed­dings, you know? I’ve done some events with them, but noth­ing that would have led me to expect this.

The big deal wasn’t the actual flow­ers them­selves (aren’t they gor­geous though? Love that arrange­ment.) I’m that one girl peo­ple hate at the office when they’re hop­ing to get some­thing on Valentine’s Day. So why is this such a big deal to me?

Because some­one saw that I was hav­ing a hard time, and when I reached out in my almost sub-conscious way, some­one reached back, and then fol­lowed up with some­thing unex­pected. Some­one took an extra few min­utes, and went to extra effort and expense to do something.

It made me feel less lost. That seems like a small thing. But.

What else do peo­ple want to feel, besides con­nected? What is all of this blog­ging, and tweet­ing, and Face­book­ing and Google-plussing for?

Peo­ple want to reach other peo­ple. Not for every sin­gle trans­ac­tion, mus­ing and conversation.

But in the end, yeah, pretty much.

Yes­ter­day, Shonali Burke wrote about using social media tools to see the story. I’d add, when you write the story, remem­ber the peo­ple.

Are you mak­ing a ges­ture every now and then that says “we care”? It doesn’t have to be elab­o­rate. And you don’t have to become best friends first.

It will go a long way, trust me.

I called Lisa to thank her and Shashi, but this means so much to me, I have to say again, thank you both so much and to the whole sup­port­ive team at Net­work Solu­tions for all you do.