Word: across
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That even goes for where you sit. Amazon offices are scattered across Seattle: the flagship Art Deco Pacific Medical Center, the Pike Street skyscraper, the original Columbia building and so on. Stunning mountain-flanked views of Lake Washington and Puget Sound are the only luxury the spartan corporate aesthetic allows. Employees are crammed two to a bare-walled office and work at Bezos-designed desks made of old doors with legs stuck on them (design director Helen Owen bets me lunch that she will still have a door-desk in five years, even if Amazon flourishes...
...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't know anyone bothered to collect...
...insist that eBay is doing a more abstract kind of damage: it's destroying the pleasures of the offline collectibles world. Al Hoff, author of Thrift Score and collector of "everything but Levolor blinds," says eBay has changed the atmosphere in flea markets and thrift stores. She now comes across entrepreneurs who are trolling the aisles looking for items they can resell for a higher price online. "The code of ethics used to be that you bought things for yourself," she notes. And she objects that eBay's efficiency is making it harder for bargain hunters like herself. A friend...
Indeed, supermarkets are fighting back with their own Net groceries that emphasize name-brand trustworthiness. Take Maine-based Hannaford Bros., which owns Shop 'n' Save stores across the Eastern U.S. Hannaford set up HomeRuns.com which has upped the ante by offering a double-your-money satisfaction guarantee. It's already doing brisk business in the Boston area. That's no mean feat. Boston is a nasty little incubator of Web grocers and boasts four firms in cutthroat competition; one company, Streamline, will pay to install a fridge in your garage, allowing the Web store to make unattended deliveries...
...give them points for effort. Webvan boasts that its 330,000-sq.-ft. warehouse is so meticulously organized that no packer has to walk more than 19 1/2 ft. in search of a product. Now, post-IPO, the firm is set to build 26 warehouses across the country at a cost of $1 billion...