A sleep specialist at a Casper mattress store in Chicago straightens a king-size Wave mattress.
A sleep specialist at a Casper mattress store in Chicago straightens a king-size Wave mattress.
Jackie Trost awoke Monday to a job prospect, one so compelling that within minutes, she’d cobbled together her application: a 15-word sentence and a 29-second video.
Wearing an eye mask that read “Warning: Do Not Disturb, Disturbed Enough Already,” Trost bragged in the video clip about how she had once fallen asleep while standing up and leaning against her shower wall.
“I think I’d be a perfect fit,” she said, cracking a smile.
With that, she pulled down the eye mask and submitted her application for a dream job, indeed — professional sleeper.
Casper, which launched eight years ago as an online-only mattress company, is hiring people with “exceptional sleeping ability” and “a desire to sleep as much as possible” to exercise those natural talents for money. Those tapped to be “Casper Sleepers” will snooze in the company’s stores and “in unexpected settings out in the world,” serving as real-life mannequins and in-house influencers whose catnaps and siestas will be spun into “TikTok-style content.”
“This is not a dream, and this is not a drill,” a Casper spokeswoman said in a TikTok video announcing the job posting.
For nearly a decade, the “bed-in-a-box” retailer has sold mattresses online with free returns after 100 nights, a new concept when it launched in 2014.
“Before we started this company, the idea of sleeping on your mattress before you bought it just didn’t exist,” one of the five co-founders, Philip Krim, told The Washington Post in 2018.
Their gambit paid off: Casper raked in $1 million in its first month of business and more than $100 million in its first full year, The Post reported.
But Casper’s founders quickly realized they’d underestimated how much people valued the physical experience of mattress shopping. When they first opened for business, a would-be customer came to the company’s office at the time, a one-bedroom apartment in New York City.
“On day one, we had someone knock on our door and say, ‘I’m here to try out the mattress,’ “ Krim said. “That’s when we realized, by accident, just how important the physical experience was going to be.”
In 2015, the company opened several pop-up stores, with Chief Creative Officer Luke Sherwin, a co-founder, telling The Washington Post at the time that “one of our biggest challenges is educating consumers that an amazing mattress can be bought online.” While employees offered coffee and waffles to lure people into the pop-up in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., Sherwin told The Post that “D.C. has a large community of Casper fans already.”
“Millennials are definitely sharing their love of Casper online,” he added. “They post the most YouTube unboxing videos and Instagram photos, but our customers are all ages.”
More than seven years later, Casper is trying to make inroads on TikTok, Gen Z’s social media platform of choice. It’s working, at least with Trost. In her video application, she said she had just woken up to a notification about the job posting. Before getting out of bed, she fired up her camera and rubbed some sleep out of her eyes — all evidence that “it already looks like I’m doing a good job,” she said. Trost could not be immediately reached for an interview early Tuesday, presumably because she was sleeping.
Other would-be Casper Sleepers also made their cases. CJ wrapped herself up in a blanket in her application video.
Ashley included photos and videos of herself sleeping through multiple scenarios: as a baby, on a floor, while snuggling a dog, while leaning against a desk with a backpack on — all set to the song “Coastline” by Hollow Coves. Erick said his friends and family had taken photos of him sleeping at different times and places, which flashed across the screen as he made an additional pitch.
“Yesterday, I slept on the bus, I usually sleep on trains, and I can sleep like that — snap — on planes,” he said, adding, “What can I say, transit time is sleep time.”
For those interested in getting paid to sleep, Casper’s accepting applications through Thursday.
Perks aside from sleeping: a part-time schedule, free company merch and one of the most relaxed workplace dress codes around — pajamas.
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