A short story about an egg, kindness and teamwork

Today I was an egg. Some of my old faults came back to haunt me but the kindness, resourcefulness and teamwork of my fellow Rymanian’s helped turned my morning around.

It’s 7:16am on a cold, fresh morning in Christchurch, my wife and I have just parked up at the airport. She is heading to Auckland for an awards event - she’s up for a dong #proudhubby - and I’m up to the big smoke to present to some third year nursing students about why they should consider starting their nursing career at Ryman. 

As I reach down to the passenger foot-well my stomach sinks... I’ve forgotten my laptop and the USB that houses my preso - headslapemoji! I’ve got my bright green Ryman Leaders bag with my handouts but not the piece of tech that runs my day! After years of lying dormant the old Matt Wright forgetfulness has come back to haunt me. 

What. An. Egg. 

I quickly do the maths, it took 15mins to get here, that’s a 30min round trip at best, my flight is at 8am, latest boarding at 7:45am, I’m not going to make it. 

“ARRGGGHHHHH!” I screamed!

This is where the kindness starts. My level headed, award-nominee wife starts to reassure me it’ll be ok, there’ll be spare laptops at the office, my colleagues will help me out. She knows me, she knows that compounding my frustrations would be pointless, no one is more annoyed at me, than me. She gives me some ideas on how to solve this problem.

Thankfully I have my phone. This is where the resourcefulness and teamwork kicks in. I email my office manager and IT service desk manager... Help :/. Within 5 mins my office manager is on the phone “don’t stress, it’ll be sweet, you’ll be fine. I’m going to contact the Auckland team and they’ll sort this”. Everyone needs a Rita – she features in our latest team photo shoot by the way – she’s the epitome of getting stuff done, but what she does so expertly is lace it with kindness. She instills some much needed calmness because I know I can trust her.

I’ve also contacted one of my team - Abbe wrote the presentation in the first place - and within minutes she has emailed to Natalie in our Auckland team. Again Abbe embodies another common trait in Rymanian’s, she cares about others, she knows it’s important to me so she’ll get this done.

I reach the Auckland office at 9:56am, I’m greeted by the Praneel who – as Rita said he would – has prepared a laptop for me to use for the day. He then hands over to Paula who helps me get set up, at the same time Natalie has the powerpoint already saved to a USB pen. I’ve got time to run through it again and then head off to the presentation. 

I know that none of this is life or death and at the end of the day the world will spin whether I deliver a successful presentation or not. There will be people reading this – hopefully – that think jeez mate chill out, there is far worse going on! And they would be spot on. There will also be people reading this that know me and see me as confident and assured, they may know that I’m a perfectionist and I hate failing, but what they possibly don’t know is that with that, comes some self-doubt. Occasionally, when I make a mistake, my old mate anxiety comes to visit and I need other people to help me show him the door. The kindness and resourcefulness that my wife and my fellow Rymanian’s showed me this morning helped me do just that. By the time I fronted up to the room full of bright eyed, driven and engaging future nurses, my confidence was back and I gave a few of them some pause for thought. Maybe a job looking after and caring for the people that provided the richness of opportunity that we have today is something worthwhile considering. That wouldn’t have happened without the help of my Ryman team.

So please know that kindnesses and going above and beyond is truly worth it. Not only to help someone do their job but, maybe, to help them feel a little more self-assured.

Every day, but especially today, I’m proud to carry that bright green bag, I’m proud to be a Rymanian.

Thanks y’all.

Yours faithfully,

The egg