Reid Beels

Sometime after between April and late September of 1999 there was a dramatic increase in the number of unemployed little green magical elves. Millions of these loyal workers were unceremoniously sacked without warning. “But why?” you might ask. “What company would do such a thing?” Well, I’ll tell you: eBay.

Prior to this great round of layoffs, the elves dutifully managed eBay’s proxy bidding system. This is the system by which you can specify a maximum price that you are willing to pay for an item and have bids placed automatically at the minimum increment until either you win the auction or reach your limit. Nowadays, this is all handled by computers, but it used to be the job of the elves. An elf was personally assigned to each and every eBay user to act as their proxy in the great online bidding process.

Presumably, when eBay’s membership grew beyond a point that could be economically handled by the elfin workforce, the entire department was disbanded and the process was transferred to a digital system. Talk about your drastic outsourcing measures.

Don’t believe me? You don’t have to, there’s a full confession in the Internet Archive. Also mentioned are Umpa-Loompas that handle other operations at eBay. Presumably these fine workers have also been given the ax, as they too are absent from eBay’s present help system.

[This post comes from a combination of oregon-trail-fueled nostalgia and the release of Amazon’s mechanical turk.