A Day At ZippyCart

ScoopGods.com - My days at the ScoopGods headquarters are often filled with boredom.  I typically don't like to admit it to many, but our offices consist of 24 card tables with empty 5-gallon pickle buckets as seats.  Coming in to work at such a depressing environment is the kickoff I get every day.  But on this day, an email sat in my inbox that held an invitation to visit ZippyCart.com's offices to learn all about what they do.

I'm a bit Sherlock Holmesy, so I wanted to get a true, in-depth look at the site and how things worked underneath the hood.  I didn't want to just visit a comfy office. You see, they claim to have a bevy of information that helps really unsavy people find the shopping cart of their dreams. They are like a computer dating service, but your date is an ecommerce hottie ready to go all the way on the first date.  (They didn't say this, but that's how I think.) 

To *really* get good look at the site's capabilities, I ordered a Tron interface kit, which for those of you who don't know, a Tron interface kit will let me go inside the internet. I nearly passed out with excitement when it arrived at my door.  Oddly, the outfit was delivered in person and in fact was actually being worn by the delivery man.  Little did I know that one of zippycart's founders was the guy in the Tron outfit.

"So you want to check out ZippyCart.com, eh," said the still unidentified man? "Well, give me a hug and let's go?"

Now, I thought, "this Tron delivery guy seems huggable," but I don't hug other men unless they are family. 

"Are you crazy," I shot back?

"Oh, I'm sorry.  It's ok, I'm Nick.  One of the founders of ZippyCart.com," he said to my jaw-dropping surprise. "Just reach around my belly and hold on tight."

Awkwardly, I reached around Nick's midsection and he around mine and just like that, I was hugging a grown man in a Tron costume.  He freed one hand and pulled out a USB cable that was connected to some router-looking device on his belt and plugged it into my computer.  He then hit enter on my keyboard and I instantly felt as if I was cuddling with ten tasers. 

When my eyeballs finished rolling around my skull, I realized I was in a world of neon lines and incessant buzzing and beeping.  I looked at Nick and he was smiling and trying not to look at all the raunchy stuff flying around us.  He floated away from me until he and I were flying through the internet just like Lois Lane flew with Superman for the first time.  Remember how they were next to each other, only holding hands?  I felt like Lois.  I was in total awe, except in this case, Nick looked even sillier in his costume than Superman did in his and there was a total lack of spark between us. 

Finally, I gained my composure and told Nick to take me to the zippycart.com servers.  I blinked and wow, we were there.  "Oh yeah, I'm in the internet," I thought to myself. "Distance is not a factor here."

I blinked again, and suddenly Nick said, "Well there you go! That was it."

I thought for a second and I could remember every last detail of the comprehensive server.  It wasn't like he gave me a two-hour tour. 

"Oh yeah. I'm inside a computer.  Everything happens really fast," I reminded myself again.

"Ok, let's go meet the rest of the team,"  said Nick as I felt every inch of my skin beginning to tingle as if I were being poked by an army of sword-wielding attack houseflies.

"So here we are," said Nick as he and I were now standing at the entrance of the rather nice-looking office space. 

People were buzzing about looking very busy, with the exception of a man standing in the middle of the lounge with a tuba.  Although he was poised to begin a tune at any moment, he was silent and reading through a small booklet about earthworms.

We walked past him and Nick (who was still dressed in Tron) nodded at the receptionist and she nodded back, and then made an odd face, in which Nick responded with an odd face of his own.  She then responded with a new one, and he did yet another!  Wholy moley!  They were communicating in ugly faces!  I had never seen such a thing. 

We continued on and out of nowhere, Nick got super giddy.

"Oh goshy darn!  I have to have you meet Amy!," he screamed as if I had stepped on his big toe.  "She is the other founder and looooovvvveeeeesssss visitors and coupons with typos."

We went through two huge doors that burst open when Nick pushed through.  The room we entered was huge but extremely bare with the exception of small desk that had just one leg.  Four cables at the corner of the desk stretched out nearly 25-feet each way to balance the desk and keep it from falling over.  On the desk was one swival-style iMac.  Sitting at the desk was Amy. 

Amy looked normal.  She had brown hair and I think blue eyes.  What was odd was that she was dressed like one of the characters from the Broadway hit, Cats.  And she was licking her arm when we reached her desk.

"Well hello soldier," Amy said to me.  "How about a Mohawk?"

Just like that, she pounced out of her chair and waved a buzzing electric razor wildly at me as Nick held her back.  She tried getting at me for 43 seconds and then abruptly stopped, winked at me and took a seat back at her desk. 

I felt a tug at my shirt and looked down to see a full-grown man, dressed in a business suite, on a trike, smiling at me. 

"I'm Scott." he said. "Amy does this when she's working on a new analysis of a cart."

I looked back at Amy and noticed that she was taking jelly beans and sticking them individually to a dedicated tooth in her mouth.  She proceeded with this bonky behavior until she finished the top row of her mouth.  She then looked at me and beamed the biggest smile I'd seen in a long time.  It made me feel somewhat warm inside.

Nick turned to me and asked if I minded if he chatted a bit with Amy and Scott.  I stepped back from the desk and took a seat on the only other chair in the room.  It was an odd chair made out of frisbee's but was surprisingly comfortable. 

The three began rattling off quintessential web words like search engine, ecommerce, secure socket layer and many more.  It was an amazing display of jargon, until Amy abruptly slapped Nick and Scott if one full swipe. What had happened?  What did I miss?

"This new cart doesn't have the gumption that I like!" screamed Amy.  "I will NOT rate this a 4.2.  I will not!"

"But Amy, this cart can handle multi-store inventory and it is i18n compliant," shot back Nick.  "It's going up on our site and if you don't like it, get out your roller skates and let's duel."

"Bring it on," responded Amy.

I was delighted.  Here I was witnessing how the ZippyCart team came up with their core content.  The information that made them stand out in the marketplace.  Obviously, this team did not take their work lightly.

Both Nick and Amy had exited out a door that was across the room from the door that I had entered.  It had a shabby cardboard sign on it that said "Mork & Mindy Need Not Apply."  I couldn't really figure out what that meant, but I didn't think I would get the answer to that today.

Scott triked up to me and asked if it was ok if he spoke in a Howard Cosell-type voice.  I told him it was ok, and seconds later, I knew why he asked me.  The lights went out and a spotlight illuminated Scott.

A microphone dropped from the ceiling and Scott took it and began announcing what was about to begin. 

"Ladies and Gents! Welcome to the Zippy Zooooonnnnnnneeee!"

A thunderous roar of a crowd came out of the walls.  I was beginning to feel quite spooked.  I was now shaking and I knew tears were making their way to my wide eyes.  The walls were slowly lifting and I could see that an auditorium of crazed fanatics where screaming as if they'd all found out that they'd each won a million dollars. 

I had thought I was in an office, but actually, it was a battle cage, disguised like an office.  It reminded me of the Thunder-dome and I almost expected Tina Turner to appear.

Who did appear was Amy, but she was now dressed in tight leather and nearly every joint in her body was now the base to a extremely sharp spike.  She was chewing on a dead bat and growling in a squeaky pitch as if she were an angry Scoopy Doo.  She had roller skates on and in her hands, she held onto a bag full of popcorn balls. 

Across the dome, Nick entered to hissing and a barrage of insults.  Obviously, this was Amy's crowd.  One toothless man yelled, "Carts Need Gumption" and threw a handful of gummy Lifesavers at Nick... to which the crowd followed with a suitable shower of the fruity softies.  Scott stopped announcing for a bit and rushed around the dome, grabbing handfuls of the treats and shoving them into his mouth.  Soon he was full, and the event continued. 

Nick was dressed more like a wizard.  He had the long, pointed hat full of stars and wore a dark blue robe-like garment.  He had a bag of what looked like Twin-Bing candy bars and he too was wearing roller skates. 

Although initially spooked to the point of bladder control challenges, I was now getting super pumped!  This was going to be awesome. 

But just as I was ready to see battle, a man far up in the rafters yelled, "Who art though thy stranger in thy dome?  A strangeling shall not behold thy bout of our mighty duo!"

The crowd scowled at me and hissed and four very large men dressed in black appeared and started bumping their bellies against me, forcefully nudging me toward the exit.

"Leave, leave, leave," is all I could hear the crowd scream as I left the dome.  Eventually, I was outside the corporate entrance, looking in, trying to ascertain what had just happened. 

A sweet little girl dressed like a marsh mellow came walking out of the entrance and presented me with an envelope.  I quickly opened it, and sighed.  My day at ZippyCart was over. 

The enclosed card said, "It was a pleasure meeting you today.  If we ever see you around here again, we WILL duct-tape you to our copy machine and leave you there for at least 3 hours.  Good Day!"