Email a copy of 'eBay's Latest Boomerang Hire: Gene Cook Returns as VP of Collectibles' to a friend
Loading ...
Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
Since eBay is the San Jose Mafia – I will do my best to use Sopranos episodes (where eBay gets its ideas from) to explain articles.
This one is from: “No Show” is the 2nd episode of Season 4 of the HBO television series The Sopranos. It is the 41st overall episode in the series. Written by David Chase and Terence Winter, and directed by John Patterson, it originally aired on September 22, 2002.
A “No Show” is where you hire your friends and give them big salaries – they just dont DO anything aka they are a NO SHOW.
This is what happened in this episode when Tony and his crew started building the Esplanade in NJ with NY’s blessing (and a cut of the action).
Here, the boomerang jobs for people who were useless to begin with, now come back for jobs with fancy titles and perks but do nothing all day (like Mr eBay for Dummies).
(Recap of the issue from the show directly: “Patsy Parisi and Little Paulie have arranged a sit-down on his behalf to discuss Ralphie’s division of jobs at the Esplanade site. It takes place at Nuovo Vesuvio and Silvio Dante presides. After some haggling, they settle on five jobs: three no-works and two no-shows. Capo Paulie receives the first no-show job. Silvio announces that Tony wants Christopher Moltisanti as acting capo of Paulie’s crew during his absence and gives Chris the second no-show job. This upsets Patsy, who believes he has seniority over Chris, as he has been a made man longer. Indeed, it was Patsy and not Christopher who negotiated the jobs in the meeting. The three no-work jobs are given to Paulie to distribute, and they go to Patsy, Benny, and Little Paulie. )