WHO ARE WE?
We are evangelical about women’s p
activities. Profitability is our scoreboa
We’re a team of active women and m
together. We want to turn all of our cu
use the products we sell. Complacen
be a starting block, but it is never, ev reaction from our customer, it might
The only finger we point is the one we
wear shoes. We act and want to be t
us nervous. We’re quirky! Our work w
if we fail faster, we will succeed soo
easy way out. We have opinions and
accessible management team that re
talent and recruited free agents. Mis We like dessert.
participation in sports and fitness
ard and the engine of our growth.
men who enjoy working and playing
ustomers into Title Nine fans. We
ncy is the enemy. Consistency may
ver the finish line. If we don’t get a be because we’ve put her to sleep.
e point at ourselves. We don’t always
treated as individuals. Policies make
works with our life. We believe that
oner. We believe that the truth is the
d we act on them. We strive for an
epresents the best of home-grown
ssion statements make us nervous.
CONTENTS Who Are We? The Tip-Off Welcome to Title Nine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 07 1st Quarter In the Beginning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 The Venues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The Players. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2nd Quarter The Title Nine Challenge: Your Career at T9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Come Play with Us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Half-Time Report Legal Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Game Over: The Really Bad Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3rd Quarter T9 Try Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Categories of Employment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Benefits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Compensation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FAQs: Shwag, Parking, Internet, etc.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33 34 35 39 42 43
4th Quarter The Who Are We? Explained. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 At the Buzzer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
THE TIP OFF
The Title Nine Playbook is designed as a guide for how we want to treat one another and how we aspire to mentor T9ers. Hopefully, this little book will be the starting block from which each of us can go about creating and re-creating a company where we all want to work. 6
Welcome to Title Nine We’re glad you’re here because, in just a short amount of time, we hope you’ll be helping Title Nine become a better company. This booklet should help you get up to speed on who we are and how we play the game of business. Once you’re up to speed, we hope you’ll be able to get on with fixing all the things that are broken and making the things that are good even better.
what’s in a name?
Title IX is a piece of federal legislation passed in 1972 that requires girls be given an equal opportunity to compete in interscholastic sports.
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A little about how this whole thing got started, who we are now, how we’re set up, and what’s important to us. Note: there are few things more important than chocolate and sports. 8
In the Beginning... It was the spring of 1989, and Missy, having plowed very quickly through eight or nine jobs in four post-collegiate years, realized that no one in their right mind was going to give her the job of running a company. She also noticed that no one seemed to be too interested in athletic gear specifically suited for women. With these two insights, Title Nine was off and running. In the beginning, as scary a thought as it may be, there was just Missy in her house, merchandise in her garage, a phone on her living room table, and 13,000 very bad catalogs on their way to some understandably unresponsive customers. In the beginning, there was a catalog with cycling gear and running shorts. There were funny looking tights. There were even basketballs, but there were no tops or tees. There was an order form, complete with pictures, that was bound into the catalog upside down. Missy got some very tired fingers prying up the staples, pulling out the order form, and turning it right side up thousands of times. In the beginning, there were very few orders, an inventorydestroying flood, and a lot of excess basketballs. That first mailing generated a sum total of 56 orders, only seven of which came from someone Missy didn’t know. In the beginning, there was a friend, Alice, a rower who worked in Customer Service at Smith & Hawken. This qualified her as a consultant, so she coached Missy on some of the fine and not-so-fine points of mail order and customer service. Alice eventually became a model, weekend customer service agent, a CS manager, and finally a merchant.
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In the beginning, there was a lot of doubt and very little money. There were also some very generous suppliers willing to take a risk on a twenty-six-year-old kid who had the crazy idea that women wanted sports gear of our own. Not long after the beginning, we moved to a seven-hundredsquare-foot office space that housed two desks and our “warehouse.” There, Missy, along with some part-timers, answered the occasionally ringing phone, printed out orders in triplicate on a very slow dot matrix printer, and entered credit card numbers, one by one and by hand, into a credit card machine. We packed boxes and chased down UPS trucks because we were never ready when pick-up time arrived. In December of 1990, we hired our first full-time employee, a med school-bound gal named Renée. She showed an early knack for computers, numbers, and analysis, and was given the whopping budget of $2000 to select and purchase our first real computer system. And there was a Brit named Jane who could not work legally in the US, but signed on to help out anyway. We were a group of runners, ruggers, athletes. We were a team, and together we all began to learn the business from the bottom up.
There have been, and continue to be, many “learning opportunitites.” Missy Park
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In those days, we’d sell our excess inventory at rugby tournaments and race expos… a very early form of our Blow-Out Sale. Our first warehouse was on the 2nd floor, and we didn’t know a balance sheet from a balance beam. We used our friends and teammates as models. They were fun to work with, they knew how to do lots of sports, and they were inexpensive. Actually, they were usually
free. Missy even tried her hand at photography. She was cheap, but not very good. We would cram our photo shoots in on non-tournament weekends because that was when our “models” were available. Our weekdays were filled with taking orders, buying product, and packing boxes. Slowly, we began to see progress. We began to figure out what we liked to sell and what our customers liked to buy. We filled our catalog with products that fit into both categories. And our customers began ordering from us in more consistent and predictable patterns.
on staffing:
It’s hard to staff a business with folks who all play the same sport on the same team. As the red ink slowly turned to black, we began to branch out. In 1997, a retail store with a notoriously foul-mouthed curmudgeon of a landlord became available. We thought we knew a good deal when we saw it and so opened our first store here in Berkeley on 10th Street. The Cal lacrosse coach was our store manager and her players made excellent employees. It all worked rather well,
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except of course, when it rained. Whenever the skies opened, the water streamed in, for all the years of that lease. In 2000, a friend of Missy’s with the requisite complete lack of retail experience was relocating to Boulder and looking for a job. So Boulder became a good place for us to open our second retail store, and Denver followed fast behind.
on plumbing:
Never let plumbers work on the sprinkler system during an in-home week.
With growth and profitability came more opportunity. This company we were building could do more than just sell stuff. We realized that we could start using some of Title Nine’s profits to create opportunities for girls and women to participate in sports. In the late 90s, we teamed up with a non-profit called Sports4Kids and created a basketball league for 4th and 5th grade girls in the Oakland public school system. That first year there were six teams. Title Niners coached these teams, ref’d the games, and kept the scores. As the years have passed, the Night Court league outgrew our ability to staff it, but it still flourishes with over 40 teams participating.
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In the Oughts, competition came to our little corner of the retail world. Lulu, Lucy, Athleta, even Dick’s decided to get in on the “trend” of women’s athetic apparel and sportswear. So our little corner got a lot more crowded. But in this crowd, we continued to grow. Our retail stores now number nineteen. We have locations in nine different states and there are over two hundred and fifty folks who call themselves T9ers. Now we sell sports bras (lots of ‘em), and everyday bras ((Bounce)). We sell sports clothes and we sell regular clothes for sporty gals. But even with all the growth and change, we are still that same group of women and men who believe that the world will be a much better place if we can all just get our work-out in.
on teamwork:
If you have to move your warehouse twice in twelve months, hire a national champion rugby
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Over the years—whether we’re learning about mail order, retail, Fouth grade girls, or forty-year-old women—we’ve found that failing faster means we reach success sooner.
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here was a battle with a printer (about the upsideT down order form) that resulted in him refusing to mail half of our catalogs. Given their quality, this was probably a blessing.
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arehouse racking that was “installed” in Missy’s W garage pulled out of the walls and crashed to the ground in the middle of the night.
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e forgot to send one mailing to our customers and W missed out on half our seasonal sales.
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e rented a warehouse that would flood every time a W big rain came along.
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e shipped out T-shirts so poorly sewn that the front W twisted all the way around to the back.
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e learned that it’s a bad idea to get in an W argument with an unpredictable landlord inside our own retail store.
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e put our phone equipment in a closet in the ceiling, W next to the hot water heater. We learned that phone equipment does not like to be hot.
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e learned that two thousand runners on a hot W day drink a lot more water than seven hundred on a cool day.
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e shipped a twenty-box store-replenishment order W to a very surprised customer in Hawaii.
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e learned that a $9 capri would generate enough W traffic to crash our website five times in one very long morning.
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here was the computer system “upgrade” that T allowed us to ship certain orders to customers without charging them. This, sadly, went undetected for months.
Somehow, even with all the mistakes, actually because of all the mistakes and the learning that came with them, we turned our first profit in 1993 and have remained profitable ever since. In the process, we’ve run a summer sleep-away camp for atrisk girls. We helped found that girls’ basketball league. We’ve opened retail stores. We’ve attracted thousands of women to run in our T9K. We’ve competed in the T9 Olympics, participated in Fitness Fridays, and garnered over a million customers. Even now, with every new venture and each new hire, we still learn by making mistakes.
on office hygiene:
Embrace your afterworkout stink. Showers are overrated. PLAYBOOK
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All along the way, there have been a whole bunch of folks who came to T9 looking for a job but ended up finding a career and making a difference. We hope you’ll be one of those people.
The Venues As a multi-channel retailer, we play the game of business across three venues: retail, catalog, and web. Retail This is the venue where our brand comes to life in three dimensions, in the form of retail stores. Retail is the brand billboard and our link to the communities where our customers live. You’ll notice that our retail crew tends to be the loudest, friendliest group of product users at any gathering. And that’s the way we like it. Catalog Our catalog is our heritage venue and the driver of both the brand and the business. It establishes who we are and how we like to talk to our customers. While the majority of our sales are completed at a store or on the web, it is the catalog that drives these sales. Web The web is the workhorse venue of the brand. It is the place where Title Nine can and should be most agile. On the web, folks should find the broadest assortment of our merchandise and the most information about Title Nine, our models, and our products.
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on technology:
When you think you’ve lost a customer file or order forever, talk to IT. They have their ways. The Players Merchandising These go-getters decide which products go into our catalog, on our website, and in our retail stores. They may pick product from a wholesaler. Or they may decide to make something that springs from their own imagination to meet the needs of their lives. They operate in a world of left and right brain—developing color palettes and design inspiration, building products that surprise and delight and work. All the while, these gals make sure that we are getting the best possible terms from our suppliers. They are negotiators, product users, and product testers. They are relentless. But most importantly, they choose and develop the products that are the cornerstone of the Title Nine brand. Marketing These folks are the number crunchers and data gatherers of the bunch. They figure out how best to contact our current customers and where to find new ones. They decide how many catalogs to mail and to whom. They oversee our
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presence online: titlenine.com, timeoutwithtitlenine.com, and Facebook. And they make sense of all the data gathered there. In their drive for greater sales, they have been known to clash with merchandising and creative. We consider that a good thing.
on crowd control:
It’s best to hire professionals when you’re expecting two thousand people to show up to your road race. Creative These folks, along with our merchants, are the guardians of our brand. They make sure that every visual element our customer sees authentically communicates our irreverent and sporty company soul. They recruit our real-people models, train our photographers, and generally move heaven and earth to make sure that every image, every word shows and tells our products and our brand. They even get Missy to write copy on a semi-regular basis.
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Inventory Planning These are the data analysts, the masters of all things Excel, the fortune tellers with the crystal balls. Once the Merch team has decided what to buy, the IP team decides how much to buy and how to distribute it across our retail and remote channels. When our customers tell us what they really want to buy, the IP team scrambles to get more of some items and less of others. Because after all, no one really has a crystal ball. Customer Service These superstars field every call, live chat, and email from our customers. They are masters at rounding up scarce product and making sad customers happy. They ship stuff to hotel rooms in London, scrounge up sources for items we don’t carry, and generally scramble to fix any and every mistake that comes their way. Distribution Center Our Distribution Center is where the rubber hits the road. Our Receiving and Quality Control teams make sure our suppliers are delivering the product they said they would deliver—they open, check, and count every shipment that comes to T9. They keep the promises we make to our customers in every channel. Our Shipping crew (aka “The World’s Fastest Gift Wrappers”) picks and packs every order, including our weekly retail orders, and then sends ‘em off to every corner of the US. And every item that doesn’t fit or wear well comes straight back to our Returns department, where they set about fixing those mistakes and turning justifiably cranky customers into T9 fans.
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IT These folks are the whizzes who help us share and distribute information across numerous networks, buildings, cities, and states. They are the ones who are responsible for the smooth functioning of our retail, warehouse, and order-management systems. They develop reports that help us run the business and they keep our desktops in tip-top shape. CAP The folks in the Conditioning and Performance Group are the keepers of the gate, the guardians of our culture. By having the final say over who gets to work here, the CAP Group builds and protects our T9 culture. Since a big part of our culture is affected by what benefits we offer, the CAP team oversees that whole buffet of benefits. So whether it’s dental and medical insurance or the T9 Olympics and Quarterly Challenges, the CAP team has the leading hand in it. Additionally our CAP Group acts as a sounding board for all T9 managers as they work to master the demands of the T9 Challenge.
on getting the best deal:
Bad Returns is where you will always find the really good employee purchase deals. 20
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In which we discuss how we like to play the game of business (hint: It’s a lot like coaching and/or playing a team sport). Plus, how we like to mix work and play.
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The T9 Challenge: Learning to Play the Game of Business the Title Nine Way The T9 Challenge is at the core of how we like to learn and work together. Just like a good coach, your manager will challenge you to do your best, let you know when your best is not good enough, and work with you to develop your unique set of skills. Part of what makes the T9 Challenge work is that everyone here must be comfortable both challenging and being challenged. If you are comfortable with both these roles, chances are Title Nine will be a good place for you to make a career.
“Pressure is a privilege.� Billie Jean King
on cheating:
Never let Missy make up the rules to any game you are playing.
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The T9 Challenge & Ongoing Development Each time someone takes on a new job here at T9, there’s an ongoing assessment. You’re deciding whether you enjoy your job, your new responsibilities, and the work environment, and we’re deciding whether your skill set and attitudes are a good match for the job description. With any new job, we all hop on a very steep learning curve and only time tells whether we ride that learning curve to the next level or fall off and have to start over. We call this process the T9 Challenge. The goal of this process is to get everyone in a job which makes the best use of her* skill set.
We consider the T9 Challenge a critical piece of the ongoing dialogue that allows both Title Nine and Title Niners to reach our full potential. Remember, this is not just something that happens to poorlyperforming employees. Every successful T9er has been or will go through some form of this process… sometimes more than once. It is a critical and on-going part of the learning process here at Title Nine. Of course, the fun part is learning quickly and taking on more and more responsibility. But inevitably, everyone reaches a point, either early or late, but hopefully not often in her career, where she and her job are not a good fit. In most cases, you’ll know it and we’ll know it. Some of the symptoms can be eas-
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on being wrong:
When you make a mistake, own up to it. If it’s a real doozy, you might just win a prize. ily spotted: lack of success with reaching goals, negative or ho-hum attitude and tardiness. If you recognize the symptoms first, let us know. If we recognize the signs, we’ll let you know about it too. Your manager will sit down with you and do two things: let you know what the issues are and establish a time line for improvement. Yes, the T9 Challenge can end with you moving on to another company, either by your choice, our choice, or mutual agreement. But remember: chances are, if your career here at Title Nine is a long and productive one, you will go through this process many times. Applying for Jobs within T9 First of all, you need to be excelling at your current job. If you and your manager agree that you are a rock star, then march yourself over to the CAP Group and put your resume up for consideration. Many of our job openings are filled internally. *We’re using the universal “she” throughout the Playbook—but not to worry—we mean both guys and gals.
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Come Play with Us A critical part of who we are is the games we play and how we play them. We seem to learn more about one another by playing together than we do by having lunch or meeting together. So we try to set aside time for fun and fitness, time to recreate together. After all, all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. Here are some of the ways we play together: Quarterly Challenges & Fitness Fridays Each quarter we like to have a challenge that pushes you physically and mentally. Those challenges have included Crossfit, Yoga, Bootcamp, and Pilates. If we don’t have a quarterly challenge, we’ll throw in a Fitness Friday. That’s where we close down early on intermittent Fridays and you’ll Amelia Earhardt get paid time off to learn a new sport or hone skills you already have. Anyone can be a Fitness Friday organizer. All you have to do is run your fitness activity by CAP and get at least four other people to sign-up and you’re on your way.
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”
Play Together, Stay Together If you want to create a team or participate in a sports event with other T9ers, Title Nine will help defray the cost. If five or more T9ers sign up for and compete on a team or in an event, then Title Nine will pay for 75% of entrance or league fees. Of course, there are limits on this. Most races and rec leagues qualify, but we won’t fund your bid to take back America’s Cup. Retail Play Days Each retail store also gets to act as its own mini-Title Nine,
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developing play days specific to their retail location and schedule. On slow days each retail team will scoot out for a ski, ride, or run —whatever takes their fancy. Starting Block This is the fun part, where our profitability can actually have an impact on our community. Every year end, we set aside a chunk of money for our Starting Block fund. These dollars help at-risk girls in our community get involved in sports. It was with this money that we got Night Court, a 40-team Oakland-based hoops league, off the ground. Most of the ideas for organizations to fund come directly from T9ers. If you’ve got ideas, shoot them right to Missy. You can find out the 411 at thestartingblock.org. Title Nine Olympics This Fall event is a full weekday of fun and games. Kind of like your middle-school field days. We divide the company into teams and everyone plays in games that are both serious and silly. The stakes are high: time off for Spirit Award winners, a cool prize for the overall point winners, and bragging rights for an entire year! Re-Charge Over the years we’ve seen sports transform young girls’ lives. In fact, nothing gets us quite so fired up as seeing that transformation up close and personal. It’s an experience we think everyone should have. So, to recharge those batteries, we offer up to 40 hours a year PTO for all Full- and Part-Timers to go out and volunteer for one of our Starting Block organizations or for any other organization that focuses on sports and at-risk girls. Of course, you’ll need to get the thumbs up from the CAP Group and clear it with your manager. PLAYBOOK
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HALF-TIME REPORT
This is when most folks go get popcorn, but stay in your seats cuz next up is a lot of boring legal language that we need to cover and some super-basic stuff that we assume most people already know. We adhere to all of this, but quite honestly, we set our sights and aspirations much higher than the law requires. Hopefully none of us will ever need to look at this—but it’s here in case we do.
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Equal Opportunity Employer We like to hire people who are competent. Competent people, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, marital status, age, gender, sexual orientation, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law are welcome at Title Nine. Anti-Harassment Here’s the bottom line: harassment, sexual or otherwise, will not be tolerated at Title Nine. No T9er should be subjected to unsolicited or unwelcome overtures, so just don’t do it. If someone is subjecting you to this kind of treatment, please report it immediately to Conditioning and Performance. The CAP Group will hold this info in strict confidence, disclosing it only to investigate and resolve the situation. If the CAP Group finds that sexual harassment has occurred, the offending T9er will be disciplined. Family/Medical Leave State and federal family and medical leave laws provide up to 12 workweeks of unpaid family/medical leave within a 12-month period for eligible employees. Under most circumstances, leave under federal and state law will run at the same time and an eligible T9er will be entitled to a total of 12 workweeks of family and medical leave in the designated 12-month period. Additional information about eligibility for family/medical leave and all other leaves are available from the CAP Group.
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HALF TIME
At-Will Employer Basically what this means is that you can leave Title Nine whenever you darn well please. Sure some notice would be nice, but you’re not legally required to give it. Just as you are free to leave at any time for any reason, so too, is Title Nine free to end our employment relationship with any employee at any time for any reason, either before or after the Try Out period ends (see page 35 for more details on T9 Try Out), unless there is a specific written contract to the contrary. If we ever do enter into one of those contracts, it will always come through the CAP Group.
Game Over: The Really Bad Things These are the things that are grounds for immediate termination: Fighting (verbal or physical, mind you), stealing, smoking (see below), lying, and the use of any judgmentimpairing substances during work hours. Also, serious service errors or issues with customers. In the case of these really bad things, all the steps of discipline can be suspended. Also, there may be some other really bad things but these are the obvious ones.
“I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things I have not.” Lucille Ball
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And, lastly—the things that should go without saying: We expect you to show up when you are scheduled to show up. We’re no different than your family, your friends, your girlfriend, or your boyfriend. We’ve made plans with you in mind and it throws a wrench in things when you don’t show up. Plus, when you don’t show up, it makes more work for everybody else. So we really miss you! It’s probably also good to remember that the number one reason for termination is failure to show up when scheduled. No Smoking. That means not anywhere, okay? We’re a sports and fitness company. Smoking is bad for your health and fitness. So we are a no-smoking workplace. Unless you or your computer spontaneously combust, there is no smoking in or around any of the Title Nine buildings, nor is smoking allowed at any Title Nine function. If you are someone who needs to smoke during the workday, then chances are Title Nine will not be a good work environment for you. We’re serious as a heart attack about this one. Visible smoking on or around the Title Nine buildings or at Title Nine functions will result in termination. No warning, no second chances. We will miss you, but not your smoking. If you’d like to quit smoking, we’ll help pay for a quit-smoking program. Talk to the CAP Group to get the details.
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The nuts and bolts of benefits, categories of employment, paid time off, and schwag. Plus, there’s info on all the bonus benefits that come your way if you participate in any sports or fitness activities. 32
The Nitty Gritty Details T9 Try-Out Everyone at Title Nine must complete a three-month try-out. The try-out is a bit like a test drive. During this time, either you or your manager can say, “Yikes, this was all a big mistake.” No notice on your part or warnings on Title Nine’s part are required. This “Yikes Scenario” is the exception. In most cases, the try-out is a time during which both you and Title Nine ensure that your new job is a good fit. You’re deciding if you like the job and we’re making extra special sure that you’ve got the appropriate skills to do your job well. If you successfully pass your try-out, our benefits kick in.
on getting ahead:
Almost anyone at Title Nine can be bribed with GOOD chocolate.
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Categories of Employment The benefits we offer here at Title Nine are determined by employment category, which is determined by how many hours per week you work. We calculate hours every six months (details on page 41). Once you’ve passed your trial period, here’s how it breaks down. Full-Time Employee Anybody who is regularly scheduled to work 30 or more hours/week. If you’re in this category, you are eligible for the whole kit and caboodle of Title Nine benefits. This includes health insurance, disability, product discounts, paid time off, Doyle Street parking, paid holidays, gym membership, sports stipends, and more! Part-Time Employees Folks who are regularly scheduled to work 25–29 hours a week are eligible for product discounts, gym memberships, and sports stipends. You are not eligible for health benefits, Doyle Street parking, Paid Time Off, or paid holidays. Occasional Employees Anyone working less than 25 hours/week. Once you’ve passed your try-out, you are eligible for our employee product discount up to 50% and certain prodeals. Seasonal Employees Folks in this category are hired for specific projects on a short-term basis not to exceed three months. While we do not offer any of our regular benefits, you can purchase Title Nine product at a 20% discount.
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Title Nine Benefits Health Care All full and part-time employees who have completed their try-out and are averaging 30 hours a week are eligible to sign up for one of our medical plans. 401-K Plan Yup, we have one and as long as we’re sufficiently profitable and you’ve been here at least one year and work 1000 hours in a year, we’ll match your contributions dollar for dollar, up to 4% of your salary. Disability Coverage Because we are a company of immortal athletes, we don’t think we’ll ever be disabled, and chances are most of you could care less about long-term disability insurance. We know that, which is why we’re covering its entire cost. If you get injured, ask the CAP Group for details of how it works.
on motivation:
When in doubt, go for a run or a swim or a ride.
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Gym Benefit The deal with this is that you get a real cheap membership to Ironworks gym here in Berkeley. If you work at a retail store not in Berkeley, we’ll contribute to your local gym membership. Traveling Team
“I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.” Katherine Hepburn
If you are a competitive athlete who has to travel for your competitions, you can apply for a sports stipend of up to $600/year. We’ll review these requests on a case-by-case basis. All you have to do is submit your requests, along with a receipt to the CAP Group. How easy is that?
Sports-Related Leave On a case-by-case basis, we allow folks to take time off to train for or compete in their chosen sport. When such leaves are granted, you will be eligible to come back to a job comparable to the one you left. During your unpaid leave you will not accrue paid time off nor will you receive paid holidays. You will be allowed to maintain all other company-sponsored benefits. For more info, contact the CAP Group. Sports Cents It’s actually more than cents, it’s dollars, up to $100 per year. Submit receipts for sports and fitness-related activities in which you participated and we’ll reimburse you. Nope, you can’t submit the co-pay for your Gym Benefit. But you can submit receipts for a lift ticket or a tennis lesson, etc., etc.
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Ice, Ice Baby Because of the whole “work hard, play hard” thing, T9ers often come to work on Monday morning with all manner of sports-related injuries. For this very reason, we have two perpetual ice machines that are available for anyone to check-out on an as-needed basis. The machines keep water at the exact right temperature to allow for all day/night icing and are especially good when you’re recovering from knee/ shoulder surgery. Bucks for Bad Breaks If you’ve gotten injured playing a sport, you could be eligible for some bucks to defray your deductible and co-pay expense. Check with the CAP Group for more on this benefit. Baby Bonus After two consecutive years of active employment, all employees are eligible for this paid leave. Here’s how it works: Starting at the birth or adoption of a child, employees (birth mother, husband, wife, domestic partner) can receive full pay for up to four weeks. Or you can choose to take half-pay for eight weeks. Your “pay” for this time will be calculated by your average hours worked for the prior six months before the birth /arrival of your child.
on living:
Work hard, play harder. PLAYBOOK
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The Butt Stops Here Title Nine is a no visible smoking workplace. If you would like to quit smoking, Title Nine will help you find and pay for a quit-smoking program. For one time per employee, we will pay up to $200 for a quit smoking program. Parking at Doyle Street… if you dare Once you’ve been a full-time Title Nine employee for six months, you can pay to get a gate-opener and park in the back lot. Facilities will have details once you become eligible. (Title Nine does not replace scratched or maimed bumpers so use the lifts at your own risk.) Cheap Stuff You can purchase Title Nine product for up to 50% off. To get in on this deal, just hop onto your ADP account page and click on the Title Nine Swag Emporium (aka the employee purchase website). Free Stuff We want every T9er to use our products. So, if you work at least 20 hours/week, you’ll get one free product a month for your first 12 months on the job. A Product Knowledge Sheet has the full scoop, so check it out and let the schwag begin!! Recruit Your Friends!! If you refer someone to Title Nine and they get hired, after they complete their try-out you are eligible for a bonus. Bonuses vary based on position. The CAP Group has details and a referral form.
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Time Out In which we give you the 411 about time off from Title Nine. How do I get time off? Hourly Employees Full-time hourly employees accrue paid time off (PTO) once they pass their try-out. PTO can be used for vacation, illness, family obligations, or personal reasons. This chart shows how the accrual works for hourly folks who have worked here from one to four years, as well as for hourly folks who have been here for five years or longer. Years at T9
Rate of PTO Accrual/Hour
Max PTO at T9 Accrued/Year
1–4
0.055385
96 hours
5+
0.078462
136 hours
Hey, what about sick days for hourly employees? We’re not big fans of “sick days” except when you’re really sick. You shouldn’t need to pretend to be sick to get a paid day off. So rather than a straight two weeks of PTO, you get two weeks and two days. You can use all of your PTO in any way you choose. You can use it for the snow’s-too-good-topass-up day or for vacation or for a sleep-all-day day. But when you are sick and have all kinds of germs going on, please, pretty please, use your PTO and stay home.
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Use it, okay? We want you to take your time off. So if you are accruing PTO, don’t let that balance of hours go beyond your max, or you’ll stop accruing time off. The point of this is not to be punitive but to ensure that everyone takes time off, okay? Salaried Employees Salaried employees do not accrue any paid time off, nor do we keep track of your days out of the office through payroll. You should take time off when you have a family or personal emergency, when you are sick, or when you need a vacation. We expect that you know how to take care of yourself and that you know what your job requires of you. With those two things in mind, we expect you to use good judgement in managing your time off—and please, keep your manager in the loop.
on the truth:
Always choose the honest solution. It will ultimately be the most profitable one.
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How the heck are my hours averaged? If you’re in good standing after your first 90 days of employment, we’ll average your hours for your first three months. If you’re averaging 30 hours a week or more, you’re eligible for health benefits! CAP runs these hourly averages twice a year, each March and September (every six months). If during those times your weekly average drops below 30 hours a week, you will lose your health benefits. You will be eligible to build your hours again and jump back on the insurance wagon six months later!
What are the T9 holidays? New Years’ Day Martin Luther King Day Presidents Day Memorial Day Fourth of July Labor Day Thanksgiving Day Christmas Day Your Birthday (on the actual day or within a week of it) We are closed on January 1st, July 4th, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. For the other holidays, the actual day off will be scheduled according to the needs of your department.
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Compensation Paydays Everyone at Title Nine is paid every other Friday (26 times per calendar year). Salaried folks are paid through the day of payday. Hourly folks are paid for all hours worked the two weeks prior to the week of payday. Overtime We calculate our overtime pay based on the work laws of the state in which you work. You can get the specifics from the CAP Group. They are also posted in each workplace. Raises Title Nine does not have set annual raises. Raises are not based on seniority or cost-of-living. Raises are at the discretion of Title Nine and are earned as you take on responsibility beyond the scope of your current job description. Ideally, your manager should be keeping you informed about opportunities for more responsibility and a higher salary. But if she is not, please, “Speak UP!”
“Sometimes sweat is the best form of therapy.” Samantha Dunn
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Bonus Each year we set sales and profit goals. If we meet or exceed those goals, then we usually pay out a bonus. You are eligible to participate in the bonus if you have worked at least one hour during the bonus period and are an employee in good standing on the pay-out date. Frequently Asked Questions A vendor just comped me a sweet new sleeping bag. Can I keep it? The short answer is no. No one, not Missy, not the merchants, no one can accept a gift from a vendor that can’t be shared with the rest of the Title Nine team. We’ve learned the hard way that there is no such thing as a free lunch. That “free” sleeping bag comes filled with high expectations and unspoken promises about future business. If vendors want to give us something, tell them to keep their baseball tickets and give us a better price on their goods. Chocolate, cookies, and other tasty treats are always nice and great to share. Everyone here has access to the internet. This access is for business purposes. However, as long as you use discretion, you may also use it for personal reasons. Discretion means no downloading or streaming of non-business-related data. And remember, we are a G-rated company, so if you wouldn’t want your eight-year old to view it, then chances are you shouldn’t be viewing it here at Title Nine, either.
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on free stuff:
Just say NO to shwag! Well, then how do I get schwag? Almost all of our suppliers offer really sweet deals, aka Pro Deals to all Title Nine employees. These deals generally translate into getting gear for 10–40% below wholesale. This benefit kicks in after 30 days of employment. Can I go buy stuff at the retail stores? You can, but you’ll have to pay full pop. The employee discount only applies to product shipped from the warehouse. How often do I have to give a gift to my manager? This one’s easy. Never. This is a tough rule to enforce, but we hope that everyone sees the wisdom in it and will abide by it. We think it makes for a much happier workplace if no one is pressured to “ante-up” around birthdays, baby showers and holidays. So that means emails about “cake in the break area at 2pm!” are great, but not emails asking folks to chip in for gifts. Can I park in the lot behind the building? Any full-time employee who has been here longer than six months can park in the Doyle Street gated lot. All you have to do is pay a refundable deposit and you’ll get a gate clicker. Remember—if you arrive before 8 am, the deal is that you have to park on the street.
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The previous pages have covered a lot about how to survive at Title Nine. But what most folks want to know is how to thrive here. Now it’s down to the waning minutes of the game, and we want you to know what it really takes to win at Title Nine. 46
We started this book with our Who Are We? and we’re gonna finish there as well. Who Are We? is the key to Title Nine’s success and the key to succeeding at Title Nine. We all, each one of us, must do our part to make the Who Are We? a reality. We are evangelical about women’s participation in sports and fitness activities. Yep, “evangelical,” that’s the word we wanted. Being in this business gives us daily opportunities to promote women’s sports and fitness with an evangelical zeal.
Profitability is our scoreboard and the engine of our growth. We are athletes and, to us, measurable performance matters. Our profitability and growth are the best measures of how relevant we are to our customer’s lives and the best indicators of our future success. Profitability allows us to thrive in a changing world, strike out in new directions and push forward our sports agenda.
We’re a team of active women and men who enjoy working AND playing together. We all need to live this to make it so.
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We want to turn all of our customers into Title Nine fans. A “satisfied customer” is not enough. We want to give our customers an experience to cheer about.
We use the products we sell. This simple fact is the soul of our brand and the source of our authenticity. We strive to fill every customer-facing position with a product user.
Complacency is the enemy. It often comes disguised as “we’ve tried that before.” But, no matter what its disguise, it can kill us in our sleep. Change, on the other hand, opens our eyes to see the world in a new way.
Consistency may be a starting block, but it is never, ever the finish line. Consistency can be served up six billion burgers at a time, but excellence can’t. Excellence is the finish line and can only be served one carefully cultivated, unique interaction at a time.
If we don’t get a reaction from our customer, it may be because we’ve put her to sleep. We are a company with a personality and a point of view. That point of view may result in a few cranky emails, but it is also what turns most of our customers into fans.
The only finger we point is the one we point at ourselves. The best way to insure that no one else blames us is to own our mistakes first. This also makes for a nicer, less political work environment.
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We don’t always wear shoes. Because it’s hard to take yourself too seriously when you’re barefoot.
We act as and want to be treated as individuals. Who doesn’t??
Policies make us nervous. We should always be wary of using them. At their worst, they squelch all that is unique about each of us and our company. Policies should never, ever take the place of clear thinking, active management and common sense.
We’re quirky. That’s quirky in the fun, irreverent kind of way... not the weird kind of way.
Our work works with our life. And we all have to work to keep it that way.
be warned:
If you fail to change the toilet paper, you’ll be outted in an all-at-Doyle email/haiku. PLAYBOOK
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We believe that if we fail faster, we will succeed sooner. Failure is the best and fastest way to learn new systems and uncover new business opportunities. On any new task or venture, the most important thing to do is to begin, and the only failure is the failure to act.
We believe that the truth IS the easy way out. Not just sometimes, but always.
We have opinions and we act on them. Even when it’s hard… especially when it’s hard.
We strive for an accessible management team that represents both the best of home-grown talent and recruited free agents. We do things differently here. No matter where T9ers come from, everyone needs to work to make our Who Are We a reality.
Mission statements make us nervous. In general, we find that groups that need mission statements don’t really have missions.
We like dessert. No explanation necessary, right?
“It’s easier to be forgiven than to ask for permission.” Grace Murray Hopper
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At the buzzer So how do you win at Title Nine? How do you contribute to our team? It’s pretty simple. Make sure to do your part in making our Who Are We a Title Nine reality, every day. We’re really glad you’re here. Each one of you will be forming and reforming the Title Nine of tomorrow. We hope you’ll help us keep Title Nine a fun and challenging place to work. Last but not least This is a booklet, not a Bible, so we will change it from time to time. Heck, you may even be the one that helps initiate a change. What you’ve read in the previous pages is the way things run now. As we grow and change we’ll change our Playbook. The lawyer-language for that is that we reserve the right to modify, rescind, delete, or add to the provisions in our Playbook, with the exception of the employee-at-will provisions, from time to time and at our sole and absolute discretion. We’ll try to notify you of changes as they occur.
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6201 Doyle St. Emeryville, CA 94608 titlenine.com