Matthew Dimond answers the question:

What is the nicest thing a non-family member has ever done for you?

That is a great question, something I've been thinking about for a little bit. And not to be too much tooting our own horns for The Shift Network, but we do work with a lot of really incredible people. I've been here six years, and working with the people here is one of the main reasons why I still work here. It's just a fantastic environment, and the people are very kind and loving and put their... you know, walk the walk and talk the talk and it's brilliant that way. 

And a perfect example of that, and this was super nice and kind and without asking anyone, was about five years ago, my mother-in-law, my wife's mother, was diagnosed with lung cancer, stage four, I believe, and a very bad prognosis. It was pretty devastating for our family to hear this, and knowing that my wife was going to wind up being the one who's going to be pretty much responsible for helping her mother.

And at the time my daughter was four, and so there was going to be a lot more responsibility for me, helping to take care of her while my wife was out of town taking care of her mom. And one of our co-workers, Jessa, who was working with us at the time, went to the company and went to people and collected money to buy gift cards to restaurants in the area that I live in, and I live in Berkeley, California. And not only did she just collect money, she went to different restaurants, actually purchased the gift cards, presented them to me at a meeting in the company, and just took it on to do her part or what she thought was her part to make a coworker's life a little easier.

And it was just so touching that without any prompting that she would just do something like that. I mean, it doesn't matter that it wasn't my mom, but it wasn't like it was my mom, it was my wife's mother. It was just, you know, a tiny bit removed, and it didn't matter. Like somebody in the family needed support, and she thought that would be the best way to support me. And it made a huge difference when my wife was gone for weeks at a time helping her mother, we could just pick up some food and not have to worry about how I was going to make dinner that night after working and all of that.

So having that support, knowing that that support was there from just a place of work, which was just... it just sealed like how much I appreciated being working at The Shift Network and the people that I work with. Most of the friends that I have in my life are outside of work. I've been lucky to have friends since middle school and high school and college, and those are the people that I spend most of the time with, but knowing that there was this love and support from people I see every day at work really made it feel like that was like a family person reaching out and helping us that way.

And just thinking about it now just chokes me up a bit because it was just so... It wasn't asked for, it was just the generosity of spirit is more than I can even really put into words. So that's pretty much... I think that answers the question.
 

Matthew Dimond is a Senior Marketing Manager on the Shift Community Transformation Team.