Something crossed my mind the other day when I was in a grocery store and was looking for a specific brand of tortilla chips. When I arrived in the chip section, I saw the no salt, garlic, and other weird varieties instead of my coveted plain-jane sea salt crisps. Then I remembered that the hispanic section also had my tortilla chips, so I walked over and found only two left, awesome!
This reminded me of the days of working at Wal-mart when I was a student, people would always ask me "Well do you have any in the back?". The infrastructure allowed me to scan the barcode on the shelf to get an inventory of the product in which I could say, oh I see there are two left, but I have no clue where those two are. Maybe someone shoplifted them? Maybe they are sitting in a pile of basketballs? Or maybe they are sitting in a box exactly where they should be? ...I always went in the back for a couple minutes and returned without an answer.
A store has a general idea of how much inventory they have, but everything is quite unaccounted for. Add in the fact that customers move things to the wrong sections, shoplift, drop/damage goods, all before they pay for the item and that kind of messes up the whole idea of keeping things smooth.
But then there is the internet, a place where you shop around one item at a time, add things to an e-cart, pay for everything up front, and then get it at a later date. Why can't physical stores act like electronic ones?
