Word: around
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This Thursday afternoon the e-Cards crew is sitting around a conference table, trying to make one another laugh. Today's subjects are office humor and holidays in February. A "Valentine's Day, My Ass" card for lonely hearts? Possibly. A motivational groundhog speaker? Probably. A support group for obscure Presidents? "'I passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but do I even get a tire ad?'" Absolutely...
...products, consumer electronics and software as well. Then there are the equity stakes in start-ups like drugstore.com pets.com and Gear.com and struggling eBay-wannabe divisions: zShops and Auctions. Who are these guys now? What does Amazon represent? And will the company's more than 13 million customers stick around for power drills and wide-screen TVs? "No one's sure where all this is going," says Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research and an Amazon optimist. "Initiatives like zShops and Auctions are distracting to the brand. They need a tab on the home page that says, OTHER CRAP...
...shelves packed with titles arranged according to a bewildering strategy called "random stow" that leaves Toni Morrison: A Womanist Discourse abutting Garfield's Extreme Student Planner. This facility is the smallest of Amazon's nine worldwide distribution centers. But today the place is humming with hundreds of pickers pushing around carts piled high with books and other products destined to land under thousands of Christmas trees...
...high expectations pervade a company that's growing so fast that entire meetings revolve around how to phone-screen the countless job supplicants; recently more than 400 people applied for four openings. "I had five interviews with five people on two different days, and this was for a temp job," says an ex-employee. Amazon detractors are easy to find. The company, like any growing society, has developed a caste system that embitters some in the lower orders. "I hated working there," says the ex-employee. "I was totally underutilized. My bosses were bad managers who just happened to sign...
...That Art Deco clock you always wanted? There were recently 19 of them being auctioned on eBay. Sure there's kitsch (Elvis snow globes, anyone?), and a scary number of Beanie Babies. But there's also luxe (usually a few Rolls-Royces are going at any given moment). Poke around and you'll come across the impressively old (dinosaur teeth!), the bizarrely new (who really needs to bid on last month's TV Guide?) and the just plain weird (anyone for a metal BEWARE OF ATTACK RATS sign?). And you will find thriving subcultures that collect things you didn...