Work Daze by Bob Goldman

Your job stinks. Every day brings new indignities and frustrations. But as bad as your job may be, and as hopeless as you may feel about it, there is one undeniable benefit you have for which you can feel ever thankful.

You don't work for Zappos.

Unless you've been living in a cave for the last decade you know that Zappos is a web-based, mail-order shoe company. You may also know that the nonstop fun and games that represent the workplace culture of Zappos is so well- respected in the business community that supposedly serious executives of supposedly normal companies spend $5,000 for two-day "culture emersions" in the Zappos way of doing business. Called "Zappos Insights Live," the execs drown themselves in the general tomfoolery that makes Zappos — inexplicably — a "fun place" to work.

Or, as the company writes on their website, next to a clip of an ABC-TV visit to the land of the Zapponians, "You've got to see us to believe us! ABC Nightline featured Zappos.com and our hiring process during one of their segments! Take a look and see if this is the right kind of environment for you! We may be a little fun and weird, but that's OK; it's a core value!"

Most of what I learned about this torture chamber masquerading as a workplace comes from a recent article in The New Yorker by Alexandra Jacobs. The reporter visited Zaptopia, which is located in Henderson, Nev., a suburb of Las Vegas. I hope she received combat pay.

Right from the front door, Jacobson catches Zappos fever.

"Entering the front door, which was decorated with Christmas lights at the height of a desert summer, a stranger gets the feeling that amphetamines might be pumped through the central air conditioning. Visitors come to marvel at the spectacle of peppy, dedicated workers: a utopia of communal cheer and solicitude: trilled 'Good morning's' and 'Hi Pumpkin's; free vats of popcorn, nuts and trail mix and politely held doors."

Jacobs was lead through the wonderful, wacky world of Zappos by the company's CEO, Tony Hsieh. Hsieh is not satisfied with making a fortune mailing Mary Janes to Mary Jones.

As the reporter writes, "He talks about being the architect of a movement to spread happiness, or Zappiness." From my reading, he spreads it on pretty thick.

The unfortunates who have the misfortune to work at Zappos are under constant pressure to have fun. The company spends a lot of energy on making sure that everyone who joins Team Zappos has not only drunk the Kool-Aid, but also followed it up with a chaser of Red Bull.

So high is the energy level required at Zappos that one poor job-seeker was accosted in the midst of a tour of the Zapland with "a cleavage-baring brunette who challenged him to a hula-hoop contest. 'Whip it!' she yelled. 'Whip it as hard as you can!'"

For those of us who cherish our unalienable right to grumble, gossip and snooze through the work day, just the thought of a high-energy position at Zappos is exhausting enough to make us want to take a nap.

Even those candidates who make it past the hula-hoop test still face challenges. "At various points in the process," Jacobson reports, "they are offered two thousand dollars to quit." I don't know how many job-seekers take the money, but if you offered me $2 to avoid a hula-hoop hoedown, I'd be on the next bus.

Once you have, quite literally, jumped through all the hoops, life as a Zappos employee is nothing but agony from morning to night. From what I can see on the TV footage, you're expected to fill your cubical with itsy-bitsy, cutsy- wootsy examples of kitsch. There's lots of funny hats and funny glasses and other funny fun items that must get pretty darn grim for employees who are forced by their allegiance to the Ten Core Values to "deliver wow" and "create fun and a little weirdness" 24/7.

Did I mention that the Ten Core Values are personified on the company's website by the Zappos Core Value Frog, or, as he is known to his intimates, as CVF.

I don't suppose I'll be qualifying soon for a Zaptopian position, so I guess I'll never get a chance to get $2,000 for not taking a job. But I do have a fun, weird idea! How about Zappos sending me $500 if I promise never to apply?

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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