Hipmunk's "spite" feature lets users book agonizing travel itineraries for bosses
Online travel site Hipmunk lets users quietly torture superiors by sorting for most inconvenient plans.
/ Hipmunk(CBS News) Hate your boss? Assistants across the Internet can now quietly torture their superiors by booking the most agonizing trip itineraries using a feature called "spite" on the online travel service Hipmunk.
The feature seems to have been added in good humor, as Hipmunk's main feature has been the ability to sort travel itineraries by "agony" - the best combination of price, duration and number of layovers make it to the top of search results.
Hipmunk's reason for including the spite feature is a nod to travel planners who "have an under-appreciated job." Sorting by spite will bring up search results with the highest price, most layovers and longest travel duration.
OK, so the feature is, for the most part, the equivalent of sorting results in reverse, but it's a fun and quirky way to liven up travel planning. Despite the tongue and cheek approach to marketing, the service is a robust, visual search - showing a grid sorted by time and price rather than a list.
Hipmunk was launched on August 2010 and is based in San Francisco. The company was founded by Adam Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman. Another Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, is listed as an advisor.
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What employee doesn't feel "under-appreciated"? You've just virtually guaranteed a lot of vindictive underlings are going to be fired. Nice move, Hipmunk.
But maybe it's just as well. If you're dumb enough to spite the one paying your wages, you're obviously too dumb to be working in the first place.
Any company, like Hipmunk, dumb enough to attack customers vicariously through others this way will probably be abandoned.
So, employers, make it against company policy to use Hipmunk and if you find underlings booking though Hipmunk, fire them.