The Insane Logistics of 'eBay Now'

Austin Carr has an eye-opening story up this morning for Fast Company about what it's like to be a courier for eBay Now, the new service from the online retail giant that aims to deliver whatever you could possibly want from the Internet to your door, in about an hour. As you might imagine, the logistics of doing this are a little ridiculous.

Carr follows an eBay Now "walker" – a kind of pedi-courier – in Manhattan who spends the better part of an afternoon trying to track down some woman's Sally Hansen nail polish (was that mint green? dark green?) and compression bike shorts. He walks 22 minutes to the nearest Kmart, spends 24 minutes anxiously digging for the stuff there (no luck on the bike shorts), waits in the checkout like any other shopper, then trains to Brooklyn Heights and walks another mile to hand over about six bucks worth of goods.