25 November 1999
Sigfried Gold

Desktop Discount Shopping, the Newest Perquisite

GAP BETWEEN MAKING AND SPENDING MONEY REDUCED TO NOTHING

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In the latest attempt to please workers without giving them big raises, some of the nation's largest companies are trying to make shopping of all kinds both cheaper and easier for their employees.

The trend has picked up in recent weeks, with such corporate giants as AlliedSignal, Hallmark Cards, Nordstrom and Northwest Airlines connecting their internal Web sites to virtual malls where merchants sell everything from Hickory Farms sausage to MCI Worldcom long-distance service. The pioneers for such plans include Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Boeing and Microsoft.

Web shopping is a potential threat to productivity, giving workers a company-approved reason to procrastinate.

Already, the peak time for Web traffic and many consumer e-commerce sites is the middle of the workday, when people have access to high-speed corporate Internet connections.

But human resource managers said they were not worried. "This isn't really bad for the company at all," Mr. Demarte said. "It isn't, on the surface, any different from what they already do" by making personal phone calls.

-David Leonhart

"No, in fact, you're really missing the point," Mr. Demart exclaimed. "This is about letting our employees spend the money they make at the very moment they are making it. Have you ever heard of the multiplier effect? A single dollar, when exchanged seven times represents not one, but seven dollars of economic activity! We have been arranging with companies whose malls we put on our employees' desktops for their employees to have our malls on their desktops. Our dream is to allow our employees to spend money at every moment of the working day on the products of our corporate partners while their employees are likewise buying our products, thereby entirely eliminating wasted time in which any dollar might might be sitting idle in an employees pocket or bank account. By tightening this beautiful cycle, narrowing the gap, accelerating the flow, by implementing the mechanism of eternal, continuous, recursive expenditure, we believe we can finally acheive the philosopher's stone of unlimited wealth for ourselves and for those companies lucky enough to partner with us."