A Chat With July’s Profile, Doug Mockett, founder/owner of Doug Mockett & Co.

CS: What’s done at the company to keep a fun and light-hearted work environment?
DM: We have an award that goes to the outstanding person of the year; anyone, the warehouse, the management, the customer service people can all be eligible. Last year, two customer service people won. They’re both fabulous. We do that … any excuse for a party. We have a lot of Mexicans, we always have a Cinco de Mayo party with a mariachi band.
A couple of the other things that seem to help keep everybody more than happy is we pay more than 90 percent of you and your family’s medical care, health insurance. We pay education … you want to go to college, we’ll pay for that. We have almost an unlimited vacation policy. It used to be very liberal, just basically take what you need, but we’ve kind of formalized it lately. But it’s still pretty good. We have a company paid retirement plan that seems to work out pretty well. All of these and we try to create an environment where you can make a mistake and your head’s not going to get chopped off. Take a risk because we all make mistakes, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.