It’s raining…no, it’s a hurricane outside!

Just as Christina E. and I walked outside to cover yet another exciting bit about the amazing people that help make life here at the Zappos Headquarters great, it started to rain. I know most of you are thinking big whoop: it’s rain, it’s a natural thing, it happens, and for you to be amazed right now is kind of like being dumbfounded by birds flying. However, when I say rain, I mean a vicious thundershower with rain drops the size of small dogs followed by pea-sized bits of hail moving fast enough to leave a good mark or at least make you say “ouch”.

Good thing we had a camera with us, because nothing’s funnier than watching the shock and horror on co-workers faces when they find out that it is raining outside followed by them making a make a mad dash for their cars (who knows, maybe they left their windows open…oops!)

Random holidays are the best, especially if it involves indulging in tasty treats!

Well, happy belated root beer float day, everybody! Typically I would have encouraged everyone to get up from their desks and run to the lunch room to make a holiday treat, but there’s one little problem – WE’RE OUT OF ROOT BEER! Yesterday, Cassandra L., Elisa C. and Robin C. took a second out of their day to celebrate this all American holiday and were devastated when they looked in the fridge only to find the root beer missing. Oh the cruel irony of it all, root beer’s most important day of the year and rumor has it that we’ll be out of root beer for an entire week! AHHHHHHHHHHH! Hang in there root beer lovers we’ll be stocked up soon.

Oh well, it’s the thought that counts right? But I’m pretty sure root beer is going to be pretty upset when it finds out that diet coke was its substitute to the holiday float.

After last week’s disappointment , Stephanie Sims was all smiles this morning because the “Random Act of Kindness Parade” decided to give her another shot!

“When I found out that I had been selected to be given a Random Act of Kindness and had missed them by five minutes because I had been in a meeting, I was extremely disappointed. I was robbed! The last time I won something was in a fourth grade raffle – I won a teddy bear, a basketball “signed” by Michael Jordan and a gym membership (what 4th grader doesn’t want to get a gym membership? Take on those eating disorders early) – and I think I used up all my luck with that one raffle.

So, I’m glad they gave me a do-over Random Act of Kindness. I might come across as the most excited recipient ever, but that’s because I finally got love from Finance and a Starbucks gift card. And I know they did this again for me because the Finance Dept. are really, really nice people, not because I badgered Maryanne and Marcie to do it again after promising to stay at my desk all morning.”

We had 23 brands for running, eye projection, apparel, gear & equipment and more at the Athletic Expo yesterday. I was pretty ignorant about both rollerblades and bowling shoes and I learned quite a bit about both of them yesterday. For instance I did not know that bowling shoes had a different sole for each foot. One foot slides so that shoe has a relatively slick sole (I knew that) and the other grips or “plants” so that sole is not slippery. And for rollerblades I learned that high end, high speed roller blades have special fins built into the wheels to cool the axle bearing.

!/sites/default/files/blogs/pawel.gif!It’s Expo Mania at Zappos this week! Yesterday we had the Health Awareness Fair – the topic of this blog post. Today we are having an Athletic Expo and tomorrow is the Housewares Expo – more on those later this week.

Oh where do I begin? The Health Awareness Expo was unique in 2 aspects. First, we weren’t directly learning about products that we carry on the site. Second, it was spread across five conference rooms in our second building, the one “up the hill.” There were 6 themes – Social, Financial, Intellectual, Emotional, Physical & Nutritional.

I’ll be a shallow boy and first mention that there were free smoothies and a very nice colorful t-shirt! Moving on, perhaps the most notorious freebees were from “Social” room – I believe the technical term is “prophylactic.” B-) Over in the Financial room we had a bank, a credit union, a credit counselor and the financial aid part of our Employee Assistance Program or EAP. In Intellectual we had our two largest institutions of higher education, UNLV and the newly renamed College of Southern Nevada, along with EAP legal. The Emotional room had several counseling and therapy services.

One indicator that Zappos is becoming a larger company is the number of health clubs and gyms that are offering us discounts. We had 6 gyms along with an eye care center, 2 dental services, 4 medical outfits and a smoke-cessation program. For nutrition, we had a couple of weight loss clincs and 3 nutritional vendors. All in all, a great and comprehensive job by our Human Resources Department!