Zappos Bribes New Employees to Quit
That’s right, Zappos offers one-week old employees a $1,000 “Quit Now” bonus if they, well, quit. Now. Per this article about 10% of employees take them up on what the company calls “The Offer.”
Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company says “Zappos thinks that’s money very well spent, because they’re really trying to build the organization with the creme of the crop…if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.”
He also told this amazing story about Zappos’ customer service. The I Heart Zappos story (darn it - bandwith exceeded, can’t show you the blog-post). A woman bought 7 pairs of shoes from Zappos for her terminally ill mother. Only 2 of them fit, but she was unable to return them (take them to the UPS store) before the 15 day return deadline because her mother had to be hospitalized. She received a check-up email from Zappos to remind her the 15 days were up. She emailed and explained the situation (she was away, her mother was hospitalized, she would try to get to a UPS store soon). Zappos replied don’t worry, we’ll send the UPS truck to you. So the UPS truck came & she returned the shoes. Then the day after that, UPS showed up to her house with flowers and a note from Zappos saying how sorry they were to hear about her mother, and they at Zappos were thinking about her. She promptly blogged about the experience, and as a result, Zappos received some great unintentional PR.