When I was a kid in elementary school, our teacher asked us to have a book at our desk to read during short periods of downtime. If a lesson finished a little early and she couldn’t think of something to do with a class of fourth graders, we picked up our books and started reading. Most kids had fun story books to read, but for some reason (probably because it was already in my desk and I didn’t feel like finding another book) my book was a pocket dictionary. While other kids were reading about the adventures of some imaginary character, I was looking up words to craft my comebacks when I was inevitably made fun of. I wish the word w00t had existed back then, not because it would have been particularly useful in my fourth grade reading level verbal counterattacks, but because I think my classmates would have realized that reading a dictionary can’t be all bad if you can find words like w00t.

w00t, alternately spelled woot or woot! and never capitalized, was selected as the 2007 Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster. Beyond being a great word, woot! is also an online retailer that sells only one item each day – just like we only post one job a day, and Merriam-Webster has a word of the day. Speaking of fun things to do on the Merriam-Webster website, try typing in curse words, clicking on the little speaker icon, and listening to the computer generated voice say the bad word as it is meant to be pronounced. Sorry, I’ll focus. So, woot! is a business based entirely on selling one item a day (typically the items are refurbished, overstock, or just need to be liquidated), which is actually a fascinating concept. Back in 2004, the New York Times wrote an article on woot! because of woot!’s amazing ability to sell out of an item in hours, when it would take a traditional retailer months to get rid of the same item. Basically, woot! sells crap at a great price in a fun way, and it works.

Speaking of crap. woot! occasionally sells what is called a “bag of crap,” although it may be identified as a boring office career, bodacious orange cooler, or bandolier of carrots – you get the idea. A bag of crap can be ordered for 3 bucks + 5 bucks for shipping. That gets you one bag, three craps. Often, the bag of crap has the most worthless items you could possibly imagine an inventory liquidator sending you; however, the rare bag of crap will contain some insane item like a huge television or a Nintendo Wii. Obviously, the bags of crap sell out in minutes and bring woot!’s server to a fast, painless death – like being run over, backed up over, and then run over again. Bags of crap are often found during woot! offs, when woot! decides to sell more than one item per day and lists a new item instantly after the previous item sells out.

As weird as woot! may sound, it’s become really popular. They have shirt.woot, wine.woot, and sellout.woot as offshoots of the original woot!. In fact, woot! has become more of a community than an online retailer. Yes, there are woot! fanatics, and they’ve created a woot! Wikipedia entry that can give you the complete rundown on the woot! culture.

So, obviously there’s a reason that we’re talking about woot!. They’re hiring. They reminded us in a recent blog post, and that little announcement in our RSS reader was enough to get us to give them a look. woot! as a company has a great sense of humor, so if you’re not funny, get funny, or don’t apply. They also don’t seem like the hand-holding type, so if you want to be coddled through the application process (or when you buy an item online), woot! is not the right company for you. They are pretty clear that customer service isn’t their strongpoint, and we’ll make the guess that HR isn’t either. With that said, their job descriptions (and product descriptions) are funnier than that kid that you went to middle school with who was convinced he was going to become a comedian, but has since fallen off the face of the Earth. It’s definitely worth a look, if only for entertainment purposes. woot! wants local candidates only for their positions, but if you’re open to living in Dallas, Texas, then give it a go anyways. Open positions include Accounting/Administrative/Executive Assistant, Programmer (St. Louis, MO or Dallas, TX), Shirt.woot Production Admin, Member Services Representative, and a Wholesale Sales Representative (Inside Sales Rep). It’s amazing what a little humor does for a job description.

Now go find a way to work the word “w00t” into your resume. We’d prefer it in the exclamatory sense, but prior work experience will suffice.

Note: On April 24th we revisited entry-level jobs at woot!

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• woot.com
• Work for woot!
• The woot! Blog
• What is woot!?
• New York Times Article on woot!

woot! We just felt like saying it one more time.

We've identified woot! as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• accounting
• all employers
• e-commerce
• Missouri
• sales
• Texas

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