I am terrible and did not see this lovely story in my inbox from our Zappos contributor Mike. What a great way to spend a birthday and a great display of why Zappos is such a great company! The people make the company…..and the execs at Zappos have provided an environment for people to be themselves and express their true personalities. You have to be a certain type of person to be able to handle and environment like this because we all know there are LOTS of different types of personalities out there! I love it and it is inspiring to me as I grow my business to remember to always treat people like well and to encourage the people around me to do the same! Happy belated birthday to Mike and we wish him the best year ever!!   -Julia

Why I love Zappos

It’s the holiday season and we are all running around like crazy to get things done before the new year. Today (December 18^th) is my 50^th Birthday and this is how my day went:

I decided to end my 40’s with a really good bottle of wine and a great steak the night before. I went to bed promptly at midnight as I wanted to enjoy every last minute of my forties I could. I experienced a lot of changes in this decade and feel very fortunate how my life has evolved. I woke up early today because I volunteered to help out with the phone lines in our Customer Loyalty area. Every year we do this to help out and get closer to our customers. I arrived at the office around 7am, did some quick e-mails and went upstairs to the station I was to work in. The first couple of calls were random questions which basically helped me to get the “rust” off and re-acquaint myself with the system we use. The Lead that was helping us out was awesome and very patient! Everyone is so nice up there. About the third or fourth call I had to figure out a very complicated issue in which I jokingly asked the customer to have a heart as I am officially in my 50’s now. She laughed and we got through it. I spoke with some great people from all over the country and had such great conversations with people that the time flew by really fast. As I was heading down to my area a “parade of Santa’s” were coming through tossing candy and snowflake confetti all over me. It may sound odd but it is a “typical” thing here at zappos and was perfect for my birthday. Mid afternoon my team sang happy birthday and showered me with some great bottles of wine and a beautiful card in which they all signed. I had to take off for the airport after that to pick up my girlfriend for a very romantic evening we had been planning.

  The evening started with checking in to our Hotel room at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay to see the gorgeous view they told me about over the phone, they were right it was very nice. We headed out to Alize at the Palms which is my favorite place to dine in Vegas because of the view and great service that they give there. They even had a “special menu” which said happy birthday on it for me. Patrick the manager always remembers who I am and he and his staff are awesome. I felt so special. But the best part was during the meal we had ordered the lobster dinners and an appetizer and decided on a nice bottle of wine from the Carneros region of Napa which I really like. After having a glass each the waiter came over with a Zappos card and said “your friend over there is picking up the tab for the wine”. I was expecting one of the other Directors but when I turned around it was Dylan who is one of the leads in our CLT department. I was floored, I know him but not on a social basis. I nodded to him and toasted my glass towards him in appreciation. When the time was right I went over there to him and said “ you are too generous”, he responded “we are all family Mike”.  It totally blew me away! What a nice thing to do for someone. It really is nice to see what our culture inspires in our people. It allows people like Dylan to wow people which I could see he really enjoyed doing. I am so proud to work for a company like Zappos and really enjoy my extended family.

 -Mike