Zappos Will Fire Employees ‘On The Spot’ If They're Late for 7am Orientation Meetings

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Earlier this year, online retailer Zappos got rid of bosses and instituted a newfangled management system called Holacracy. Bloomberg reports that 200 Zappos employees decided to take a buyout rather than deal with the jargon involved with Holacracy, and now Zappos is recruiting hires who are all in with the new philosophy. To get everyone on board with Holacracy and office culture, Zappos is putting new employees through what has to be one of the most intense orientations in retail.

First of all, sessions start at 7am, according to Bloomberg, and anyone who shows up late is summarily fired on the spot. The orientation lasts for four weeks, and includes two weeks of telephone customer service training for every single employee. At the end, there's a final exam, and employees must answer 90% of the questions correctly or lose their jobs.

Then on top of all of this, Zappos has added a three-day Holacracy class, which involves practicing meetings the Zappos way. Everyone in the class must lead a meeting two or three times over the three days, which means that if there are 60 new employees in the orientations, that could be almost 200 meetings. Why so many meetings? Holacracy, by all accounts, seems kind of confusing. "Holacracy is like a sport or a new language," Zappos orientation leader Jake McCrea told Bloomberg. "You can read about it, you can hear people tell you about it. You won't understand it until you start using it."