We had a leap year birthday here at Zappos HQ. Jaime is 6 years old today! Here she is blowing the candles out on her Birthday Chicken Pot Pie! Jamie was also recently promoted to Web Producer! That's what the blue star candle is for.
Happy Leap Year Birthday!
Let me tell you a story about a man named Kev.
A real Zappateer, he rarely left his crib.
Then one day he was moving his cube,
and up came the walls of his brand new hooch.
Well the first thing you know ol' Kev's a living there.
Kinfolk said Kev, Zappos is the place you belong to be!
Translation: A bunch of coworkers prankedKevin's desk with a bunch of boxes. So in response, he built his "modular prefab" housing unit. It seems he has very supportive neighbors and they will be bringing over house warming gifts like a chandelier and a fence for the front yard. Pictures when it happens! And no, he does not really live there - Zappos isn't zoned for that. 
I underestimated how fashionable we are here at Zappos.com. As luck would have it, I mean, as fashion would have it I stumbled upon (have you checked out StumbleUpon by the way? RULES!) 2 more argyle wearer people types. Luckily, they were available enough to pose for me, showing off their argyle styles. I think we may need to formally make Zappos.com the argyle headquarters of the WORLD! It can happen.
Our "Project Management" team recently moved up to the "new" building up the hill and decorated their space with a cafe theme. Today, they had their "grand opening" complete with coffee from the fancy machine <Fhuzzzzzzzzzzzt!> and some yummy treats. John and Sean flank Thomas, one of the "customers."
I recently made the aquaintance of "Henrietta, the Ugg-ly Spider." She lives on Renee's desk up in our superb Training Dept. See the tiny Ugg boots?
And see her collection of commemorative Zappos rubber duckies - from the left, NCCF/Halloween #2 Duck, HipHop Million Dollar Sales Day Duck, Holiday Cold Duck, Halloween #1 Duck, and Valentine Duck. Check out the white Marc Ecko Rhino too.
These lovely ladies don't know how proud they should be of their style, they wished to remain anonymous. I have trouble with that, I mean really, if you are so fashionable to know that Argyle is the new _______ you should embrace with open arms (and eyes). They chose to wear the black bar across their eyes so the fashion police (the good ones, the ones who recognize good fashion) don't stalk them continuously for fashion advice! As a strong promoter of Argyle I have some advice for these ladies... wear more Argyle!
Thanks, I'll be here all week. PS, we love Argyle!
There was an explosion of funny (strange and haha) posters today around Zappos. I'll start at the upper left corner and go clockwise.
1. A guy in pajamas making a peace sign - the captions say "So how
old are you today little buddy?" and "I"M 2 YEAR OLD NOW!" <sic> Happy Birthday Tim!
2. One of our Athletic Performance buyers wearing an exceedingly bright pink body suit. I'll try to pry the back story from him.
3. A very odd ransom note - I dunno why a basketball motif was used. The text is too disturbing to repeat here.
4. A Wanted Poster -looks like the Mayor of Zappos is "Wanted for the kidnapping of Dev's Zeta mascot." This "mascot" is actually a cardboard cutout of a certain Hollywood actor who has Zeta as part of their name. Rumor is it was shipped off to be used in an upcoming convention.
5. Another "Wanted" poster - it is allegedly related to #3. "If you see this man, approach with caution. He is wanted in the mysterious disappearance of Chris [redacted] personal effects.
Must be a full moon or something...
This past Valentine's Day we had 2 fund raisers at Zappos. Our "Fun Committee" aka "Flook Comm" sold and delivered little red gorillas with a funny slogan on the chest, a banana-shaped lolly and a note card. Our Creative Services Dept. sold and delivered an elegant box filled with chocolate kisses and a discreet note card with a lipstick kiss imprint. Delivery was a bit chaotic but it was a great way to meet new people and visit old friends.
The gorilla sales collected $318.45 for the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation and the chocolate kiss box collected $1621.50 for the American Heart Association.
Both the official and unofficial decor @ Zappos rotates on an understandably unpredictable basis.
When I saw this golden frog at our Front Desk and the top Missy was wearing today, I was delighted when she agreed to hop up on the table and mimic the frog's pose. Thanks Missy! Kismet indeed. Et tu Kermit?
Hey I'm taking liberties with the famous song by Kansas in the title of this post. So early this afternoon, Brian K. comes over and says "Hey you have to see what's going on out front!" Turns out the Merchandising Assistant I (MA1) class was celebrating the glorious t-shirt weather today and having a culture building session by doing street chalk art about our 10 Core Values.
Several months ago I was very impressed to learn that Zappos has an inhouse training program for the Merchandising Dept. It takes you from MA1, MA2, then MA3. After that you become a Buyer 1, Buyer2, Buyer3 and then Buyer. We're talking required reading (remember all those book cases in our front lobby), classroom discussions and tests.
So I think it only fitting that the first picture shows our Core Value #5.
Zappos Core Value #5 Pursue Growth and Learning.
Here's Chris, the Instructor for today's class, getting CSI'd by one of the students. Chris is a real character. Maybe one day I'll show you a picture of him in his "jester elf" costume.
After they outlined Chris, I think someone dragged him off to use as a training dummy for the WAFA class. Next, Kelly, Ashley and Karrie filled his outline with more core values.
ZAPPOS, POWERED by Core Values!
So, there is this lady, let just call her Lynn shall we? Anyhoo, this lady, Lynn if you will, sits at this desk and claims to do something or other for this web site Zappos.com. Something about UX or something? Who knows. Anyhoo (part two), while UX'ing apparently she takes some personal web browsing breaks. How do I know this information? Just look at the photo below and you decide whether I need to talk to her about her productivity. Sheesh!
It's been a long time coming but we are finally getting close to beta launching our new and improved web site! We've been working hard at trying to create a better experience for you, and we are about ready to begin sneak peeking various parts of the soon-to-be VIP site. So many people and teams have been working crazy hard to rebuild are underlying architecture, user-interface, look and feel and overall experience. Below is a snippet of one lonely page on the site, millions more are just waiting to be viewed! The time will come!
I don't know if "WAFA U" are words to a Maori Haka or not but it also stands for "Wilderness Advanced First Aid" and we're having a "WAFA University" of sorts at Zappos this week for some of our Athletic Performance team members. Quite of few of them are active outdoors people and it will be a plus to have them well trained in first aid.
In this picture, Alana and Alicia are practicing moving an "injured" Lacey. Class act that I am, I asked Lacey if I could have her car if she didn't "make it." I'm not sure if she was trying to kick me or pretending to have a spasm.
And in this picture a very vocal David feigns an injury as David and Anand attempt to diagnose and stabilize him. This was going on right outside my office area and we all heard some rather rending screams of fake pain when this class session first began. He was pretty loud and I think a lot of people were secretly happy when he pretended to passout.
Nope, not records as in "world record" or as in legal documents, but literally the round, vinyl ones. See the door at the end of the hall? If you turned left from our "Inner Lobby" from yesterday, you'd come through that door and see our long line of records from our last Merchandising Quarterly Awards Night. Various members of our Merchandising team were recognized for sales improvement and productivity suggestions. There's also some really hilarious skits put on by everyone who is new to Zappos since the last gathering. It's a great way to break the ice and meet new people at Zappos.
Here's a closeup of one of the framed records.
When I first visited Zappos for a job interview about a year ago, I noticed there was a freezer case of ice cream treats in the lunch room. I had already heard about the free food perk and was told the ice cream was free too. Oh boy, talk about a delicious dilemma. I have very little self control when it comes to ice cream, heck food in general, and I tearfully confessed this to several people who interviewed me. But I still got hired - I guess they really do mean it when they want people who are "fun and a little weird."
The first couple of weeks I hit the freezer pretty often. "Butt" like that famous guy, Isaac "Fig" Newton said, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction." I dunno, seems like when yummy stuff is involved it is a "more than equal reaction." So I started pacing myself. I'm proud to say I've actually gone a couple of weeks at a time without chowing on the frozen cow juice.
Then, several months ago a soft serve ice cream machine showed up. I was somewhat surprised that it was ice cream not yogurt so I still went easy. And now, just last week, we switched over to frozen yogurt - FAT FREE BABY! (calories are still significant though!) Turns out the reason for this is we finally have the extra refrigerator space for the frozen yogurt mixture - the ice cream mixture can be stored at room temp.
In the picture below some of our Active Performance crew show their love! 
And here's a treat I whipped up - vanilla frozen yogurt with a cling peach slice, a couple of raspberry cookies, some dried cranberries and some honey-roasted peanuts. Mmmmm, it's practically salad!
Yep, I'm told we've done this 4 years running. Here's a group picture of 12 of the 19 who came forward on judgement day. They all entered the contest 1 month ago and were inspected for a clean shaven state.
We had a lovely young lady enter the contest this year - the first ever and hopefully not the last. (first row, leftmost in the picture) This is a slice of Zappos history! Each entrant bought in with $20 that went into the prize money pool. First place takes home $200, 2nd gets $120 and 3rd $80. Fourth place gets "a handshake."
On Friday afternoon, they gathered to have their longest hair plucked and measured.
Here's the winner! Congratulations Matt!
(I'm also working on a video clip of the judging so check back!)
Oooh, the inner lobby! I was hoping I could use the word "anteroom" but it looks like I blew my chance on Day 2.
So here's what you're looking at from right to left - Mike's backside as he goes up the stairs to the 2nd floor, a low bookshelf with more books to read, a surprised Missy at the door (I'm notorious for that), a taller bookshelf and a white board listing birthdays, Zappos employment anniversaries and other announcements. The actual inner lobby is on the other side of the double glass doors where Missy is standing. You can see someone waiting for the elevator to the left. Now the righthand side, that's where this blog post's "Fun and a little wierd" is located. Tadaah!
We actually have a shoeshine bench complete with a skeletal pirate. (on the right) John (on the left) hefts a sword and bandana. Some of the other details in the picture - on the right is our dry cleaning pickup rack and on the left is a pair of water fountains. Contrary to popular opinion, only water comes out of these fountains - this isn't a Chocolate Factory. And at the upper left is the cat sign for Felix, our shine guy who comes in a couple of times a week.
Anybody remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry said the long drawn out "Helloooooo!" Well in a vaguely related vein the WOW Committee had a "Hello project." My friend Patrice conceived this concept and the entire group divvied up a stack of brightly colored stars and wrote funny, upbeat greetings on them. Then they passed them out to people, especially people they did not know and gave them a couple of extra ones to pass on. Zappos has about doubled in size in the past year and this was another way of breaking the ice, Zappos style!
...Hot Chocolate Coffee that is. This morning was cold and damp and I needed a caffeine kick so I made an uber hot chocolate to get the gears going. We have a rather eccentric fellow who works here and he posts pictures of "concoctions" that he dreams up using items from the Lunch Room. (Some of them seem kind of foul if you ask me...hope he doesn't read this )
It was "wig" day up in our fun loving Finance Dept. today. My "mane" man Ryan posed for a pic next to Mr. Benjamin, a totemic figure in the world of Finance you know.
Even LineBacker plopped on a wig. Here she is hiding out. I dunno why she turned all shy all of a sudden.
Nevada Senator Ensign recently stopped by our Zappos corporate office to talk with CEO Tony Hsieh and learn more about Zappos.com. What impressed him most was our free shipping (which he had just discovered!), but he also mentioned how he couldn’t believe how friendly everyone was. He seemed shocked that nearly every person he walked by smiled and said hello. "Is there a signal telling everyone we're coming?" he joked in the Creative Services department.
The senator is a big fan of Cole Haan shoes, he mentioned. Good news: no need to pay for shipping on Cole Haan shoes from Zappos. Bad news: they're not the best footwear for playing Dance Dance Revolution in. At least, that's the excuse he gave me when I asked if he would take a stab at it on his way out. While it would have been mildly entertaining, I won't hold it against him – I've played DDR in high heels and completely understand the "appropriate footwear" thing.
This is what you'll see on the righthand side when you come in the main doors. We have our spiffy new coffee machine, a water cooler, the Mardi Gras float built by the Facilities dept., the door to Facilities, a bookcase with more suggested reading and a staircase leading up to our Customer Loyalty Team area. Our wonderful CLT Representatives handle your calls and emails.
So the first thing you'll see coming in our front doors is the Zollar Store on your left.
