The company I work at and the team I’m on is spread out across the world. In my immediate team alone, we are in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Charlotte and London. I’ve met my boss in-person twice. I have one direct report on my team who is in Atlanta with me, Cesley, and another woman who is in our larger Corporate Communications group, Heather.

Kim, our group SVP (senior vice president) is the one who lives in Charlotte and she usually tries to come down to Atlanta a couple of times a year for department meetings, etc. I really like Kim and my interviews with her during my recruiting process were a huge part of why I decided to join the company. She wasn’t able to come earlier in the summer and I had mentioned to Cesley I hoped to see her before I went out on maternity leave. Apparently, this was the comment that started a heck of a lot of planning…On August 8th, Cesley, Heather and I went to lunch to meet up with a coworker they wanted me to meet who wasn’t in the office that much named Nancy. I’m always happy to meet in-person with others in our marketing department.

We sat down at La Parilla and were enjoying some nachos when Cesley and Heather looked behind me at who I assumed was Nancy – but was actually Kim!!! I was STUNNED. SO incredibly surprised and beyond amazed that she had driven down from Charlotte to have lunch with us and see me before baby arrives. (Have tears in my eyes writing this even now).

I freaking LOVE surprises, but I’m such a planner I’m very rarely surprised. Cesley did all the planning for this – getting Kim to come down, planning the lunch, and even planting the “decoy” of “Nancy” so I wouldn’t have a clue. She even had a few meetings placed on my calendar that were “fake” to throw me off even more. And my boss, who is up in Philadelphia, was also in on it. 

As if that weren’t enough, when we got back to the office, I thought we were setting Kim up in a conference room to take some calls but it was completely decorated for a baby shower! Ribbons, gifts, cupcakes – all planned by Cesley and included a few of the ladies I work with in HR, too. Unreal!

I was blown away and Kim told me that “we all think a lot of you” which meant so much. I love the flexibility of a technology company and think it’s amazing to work with people around the world but sometimes the camaraderie isn’t there as much as when most people work in the same space. This made me feel that the camaraderie is still there, even if we’re not all physically together. 

Another lesson here is around expectations and how detrimental they can be to happiness. I definitely had expectations for my other showers and had some disappointments. I had no expectations that anyone at work would do something like this – and certainly would never expect my direct report to do this – and I ended up having an experience filled with such wonder, happiness and positive emotions – and nothing else.

I ended up with THREE baby showers. How lucky can one soon-to-be mama be? Pretty lucky, as it turns out. THANK YOU!