Word: carpetting
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...increases," says a tall, well-dressed woman who works for a shoe-repair shop. "We'll be expected to do more for our money, of course, but we're all for that. I'm saving for the first time in my life." A middle-aged administrator in a Moscow carpet factory agrees that there has been visible change under Gorbachev. "People think what they're doing is more worthwhile," he says. "Russians were never given the chance to use their traditional wisdom because they were always being told what to do by bureaucrats. Now we are self-sufficient...
...during the peak summer travel season, the Government is recording a surging number of consumer complaints, delayed flights, near midair collisions and air- traffic- control errors. The airlines are scrambling to improve conditions in the hope of easing growing indignation in Congress. -- Scandal dethrones the ZZZZ Best carpet- cleaning king...
Although he hailed from California, the Mecca of high-tech entrepreneurship, he made his mark not in silicon chips or spliced genes but in the mundane business of steam cleaning carpets and draperies. Nonetheless, Barry Minkow was touted as a genuine hero of the '80s -- a cocky, self-made overachiever who at age 15 started a garage-shop carpet-cleaning operation called ZZZZ Best (pronounced zeee best) and within six years built it into a $200 million empire. He was a millionaire at 18, and by the time he turned 21 last March, he was the darling of Wall Street...
Born in a lower-middle-class subdivision in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Minkow discovered early on that money was the magic carpet by which he could escape his humble origins. His family could not afford a baby-sitter, so after school the youngster did odd jobs for his mother at the local carpet- cleaning shop she managed. By the time he was ten years old, he was soliciting business over the phone. Five years later, in 1981, he bought some steam- cleaning equipment and set up shop in his family's garage. Unlike many entrepreneurs who give their companies...
...suits by flabbergasted stockholders. One investor is reported to have lost $7 million in the debacle. But the hardest hit was Minkow. Not only had his $100 million stock holdings shrunk to less than $6 million, but his oft announced dream of making ZZZZ Best the "General Motors of carpet cleaning" was irrevocably shattered. Once lionized as an emblem of what brash youth can do, he had become, almost overnight, a symbol of where overreaching ambition can lead...