the wonderful land of Chico's

This is where I work now! Chico's FAS Inc. World Headquarters in Fort Myers, FL. I work on the Internal Audit Team (IA). The IA team is known around the organization as the "fun crowd", so I fit right in! We have an extra office in our area, so we of course turned it into our little game room. We have a dart board, foosball table, and use the hallway as our putting practice area. There is also a little back porch area that was quickly converted to the grill/smoker area (not for smoking cigarettes...a smoker for meat). We've already had TWO department lunches of smoked goodies (smoked ribs a week ago and then smoked salmon today). The smell drives our neighbors crazy! haha! Fun is had by all here at Chico's.

It didn't take long for me to get used to the "casual" atmosphere here. They certainly take "business-casual" to a new level. Jeans are definitely a regular thing around here - not just on Fridays. And you'll probably see some shorts and flip flops now and then. During my second week here, my manager (Rodney) took me around to meet a few key people in various departments. We were walking down the hallway and ran into an older-looking gentleman in jeans and a polo shirt that was filling up a watering can. He was, obviously, going to water some plants. We stood there and made small talk for a few minutes. Then Rodney said, "Oh, Tiffany...this is Charles Kleman." We walked away and I thought, "I wonder what he does - maybe he's on the security team or the maintenance staff (hence the watering can)." Before I even asked, Rodney said, "By the way, he's the CFO." The CFO! Of a multi-million dollar public company! In jeans and a polo...watering his own plants...making small talk with the new internal auditor. I knew right away that there was definitely something different about this place.

Over the last few weeks I've noticed even more of that friendly, family-oriented attitutde in just about every Chico's employee. Don't be misled, we DO actually work around here. There might be a few late nights here and there or deadlines to meet, but we balance out work time and play time. I think I'm going to like it here.