Personnel Statement
The poker table in the lobby of HomeStore.com’s Thousand Oaks corporate office seems a little out of place. Until you walk around the corner, that is, and see the castle, the cave and other cubicles decorated for the company’s “Off the Wall Office Contest.”
Nearly all of the home office’s 250 employees entered last week’s competition, remodeling their work spaces into fantasy environments that would probably be grounds for dismissal in any other office. But HomeStore is a slice of Silicon Valley in L.A.’s backyard. Workers here are just as untraditional as their counterparts up north. They log 14-hour-plus days and make up the rules as they go.
“In the Internet world, there’s almost no concept of time and space. People are trying to get so much done so quick,” says Jeff Charney, vice president of marketing and communications for HomeStore, a group of sites using the Internet as a channel to buy, sell, rent and remodel homes. “If you’re going to be here at 1:30 in the morning,” says Charney, why not be comfortable?
An animal skin and a fake bone decorate the floor of the site designer’s cave. A doorbell rings, then warns: “Enter at your own risk.” Other ground-level entries include campsites, picnic grounds, a beach, a bat cave and outer space. “If the first floor is your brain,” says Charney, “the second floor is your brain on drugs.”
At the top of the stairs, a garbage dump sits in one office, a stone’s throw from an aquarium, an Austin Powers love shack and a tiki hut, where blended daiquiris are served in a tropical paradise, complete with bamboo curtains and a rubber replica of Bill Gates’ head on a stake.
Down the hall is the Photo Lownj. A “security guard” blocks its entrance, giving wannabe revelers a hard time before letting them into the club, where strobe lights flicker, a deejay works the turntables and a bartender serves mixed drinks.
It’s an unusual and seemingly unproductive work environment, but Chief Executive Stuart Wolff isn’t worried.
“When you throw people in constraining boxes,” he says, “they’re less productive. It’s abnormal. What you’re seeing here is more normal in my opinion. They’re actually more productive.”
His own office is like a boxing ring, a metaphor for his company’s battle in the marketplace. The centerpiece is a boxing poster with Wolff’s head on Oscar De La Hoya’s body--and tickets announcing “the War of the Web” between Stuart “The Tulsa Tornado” Wolff and HomeStore’s top competitor, Bill “800 Pound Gorilla” Gates.
The contest was judged by three outsiders, including Thousand Oaks Mayor Linda Parks. First place went to Jeff Wu, in marketing, for his women’s bathroom.
A piece of toilet paper sticks out from under Wu’s closed door, affixed with a yellow “out of order” sign. Emanating from within is the sound of endless flushing. “You’re going to turn that off, right?” asks his next-door neighbor with the miniature putting green.
Wu’s reward is a trip for two to Las Vegas. But he could just walk upstairs for that, to the Vegas Strip and the Chapel of Love.
