In a matter of months, Dasher stand-out Denise Maldonado lost several family members to COVID-19. During that same period, several other loved ones passed away from other diseases, adding to her already heavy burden of grief.
When her 18-year-old son started exhibiting symptoms of the potentially lethal virus, she was genuinely terrified.
Her son indeed tested positive for COVID-19 and began his 14-day quarantine in the attic. His twin brother isolated himself in the basement. Then her beloved one-year-old granddaughter developed a fever and the same symptoms. It was another COVID-19 case under her roof. Adding to the incredibly dark time, a few days later, Denise herself got the virus.
A single mother of five enveloped in illness, isolation and loss may seem like an unlikely team member to profile under the headline of “Positivity.”
Still, it is her triumph over a valley of adversity that shines as a perfect example of her and her team’s outlook on life. Her contagious smile, boundless energy and charismatic personality helped her rise above hardship after hardship through the power of positive thinking.
Dasher, her employer for the past five years, also gave her a huge helping hand in remaining positive amid an onslaught of negative news.
Our encouragement of a positive attitude can be misconstrued. It does not mean you act like life is sunshine and roses when tragedy strikes. Workers aren’t expected to be “happy” no matter what. Being positive does not mean being in denial about troubles or smiling through real pain. It also does not mean, “I punched the wall, instead of you, so that’s positive.” It is more about finding the best in the worst of times.
We do not just preach the value of positivity. All of us help cultivate it by being supportive and “there,” even in profound loneliness and enormous sadness.
As the wholesale quarantine began in the Maldonado household, a box appeared on Denise’s doorstep. She assumed it was an order from Amazon. It was from us. The box contained a carton of tissues. Tissues may seem like a small thing, but it meant the world to Denise. Everyone at Dasher was thinking of her and was behind her.
When Denise came down with COVID-19, she panicked not just about the infection but her job. She was training people; she had a quota to meet; she had a large family depending on her. But she says her Dasher managers put her at ease and told her to take two weeks off to recover.
“It’s rare to work in an establishment where your health and well-being come first,” she says with emotion. There was no pressure to hurry up and heal, no radio silence from employers too busy with the bottom line to worry about a team member running on “E” emotionally and physically.
Meanwhile, the packages just kept coming: a fleece blanket, a pile of cards, Clorox wipes.
“They clearly knew how scared I was,” Denise says. Would she suffer complications like so many of her family members and be unable to fight off the chameleon-like virus? “They thought of me and knew how it would affect me.”
We also texted her daily. Denise says she appreciated the authentic texts of concern, asking, “How are you?”
“Dasher is a caring and amazing company to work for,” she says. “It’s genuinely an outside family.”
The caring began long before COVID-19. When she started at Dasher, she endured several rocky years in her personal life. Among the heartache, both her grandmothers, matriarchs in her close-knit family passed away. Her immediate supervisor, Tracey Glenn, now the president of Dasher, showed up at the funeral.
To illustrate the countless ways Dasher lives out the directive to “Be positive,” Denise says: “Dasher is more than positivity, and teamwork and family. It’s not just where I go to work every morning. It’s a feeling, and it’s a good feeling.”
Fortunately, her son, her granddaughter and Denise herself healed fully.
She believes her story shows that “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything.”
Nothing highlights the power of positivity more than a devastating pandemic and a team that refuses to “distance” emotionally, even when social distancing rules demand physical space. Her team remained far, yet so close.
Dasher is a data-driven, customer contact services operation with a focus on communicating complex messages to diverse populations. Specific capabilities include face-to-face communications provided by our field teams, customer engagement strategies provided by our call center and member engagement staff, and secure, complex, variable mailing services provided by our production team. Dasher is an experienced Minority, Women and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (MWDBE) with a bestselling book, “The Talent Pool,” and is certified by AICPA with the SOC2SM Type2 data certification and validation.