Top 10 signs that I may just work for a startup

The company I work for seems to expand and contract with the tides, mostly because the place is crawling with contractors and partners. So it's always (listen to me -- I've been there since February!) seemed like a lot of people work there, even though far fewer are actually under the employ of the company, itself. But I really do think I work for a startup, and here are some reasons why:

10. One of the first times I talked to the woman who's now my boss, she had to stop our phone conversation because there was a huge delivery of chairs. The company had just moved into their current space and there wasn't a lot of office furniture. There was no receptionist. So my boss had to let the delivery guys in. Then she came back to talk to me.

9. The company didn't even have a web site until after I accepted my offer. At first, I could just mumble that we were in the "online retail space". Then after the web site went up, I could talk about it a little more and say who our customer is. (Yes, that's a single customer. For now.)

8. I'm employee #18, at least according to my pay check.

7. We get weekly deliveries from Peapod, including yogurt, oatmeal, cheese sticks, and soda.

6. The head of HR goes to Trader Joes regularly to buy hundreds of dollars worth of nuts at a time. She has the cashier convinced that she feeds the nuts to squirrels.

5. We have birthday cakes from a very nice local bakery every seven to fourteen days.

4. In order to get business cards, we have to come up with a real title and a silly title. My silly title is "elite wildcat rancher," which is an anagram of "lead technical writer," my actual title. There are two lead technical writers, by the way, out of a total of three writers.

3. Around 2 every afternoon, the nerf weapons come out and the open cube area becomes a dangerous battleground. Some of those programmers have extremely good aim.

2. They keep giving us new benefits. I think they got health care after I accepted the job. And in July, we'll get a 401K plan.

1. And the number one reason I think I work for a startup is this. The company was launched a year ago and worked in stealth mode for months. Today, at our almost-weekly company meeting, after a long introduction from the two founders, we were introduced to a woman who is studying at New England Conservatory to be an opera singer. The founders had written a ten-act opera (ok, short acts, but still) about the history of the company and the characters who work there now. In front of God, employees, and customers, the student sang the opera to the tune of an aria from Aida. The customers' jaws dropped. My jaw dropped too. At the end, there was a standing ovation, immediately followed by "OK, now get back to work."

And that's how I know I work at a startup.