Why do you insist I look for this?

[Sparklyturtle]

Bet you someone had been assigned to bring an asparagus dish to the family's holiday dinner, and forgot to buy it. Any time I was asked for something strange on a holiday when I worked for the 7-11 type store, that was usually the reason.

Then there was the night I was asked to recommend a wine to take to someone's house. I am a total nondrinker who knows more about quantum physics than I do wine e.g. almost nothing. I did know to ask if they were having meat or fish, and they didn't know, so I sent them on their way with some Weibel Green Hungarian. Please don't gag or laugh at me if this isn't a good choice; I was going according to the radio advertisements, which at the time were very clever. Since the customers didn't know any more than I did, they bought it and went on their way, and I never heard if it was a hit or a miss.

[Trixie]

If I remember right they may have even asked if we had fresh asparagus but I'm pretty sure they did ask if we had fresh something. We get some strange calls on Christmas.

Luckily we don't get too many people asking for wine/liquor advice. We just have a bunch of regulars that know what they want.

[Mr Hero]

Following that to its logical conclusion, all stores should carry everything in existence. Oh, you sell transistors? Well obviously you should have a nuclear warhead since the controller inside one contains those.

Do you sell hubcaps for a '72 Pinto hatchback?

[chimera]

Our inventory system is woefully inadequate for the reality of our fabric. So many things can happen to make it appear to a customer checking stock online like we have a fabric that has in fact been long gone or is only in useless little <2yd pieces. It fell through the cracks in shipping, it was shoved somewhere we'll never find it, or it was straight up stolen.

I cringe (on the inside, of course) when people call or walk up and ask if we have x fabric and come to find out, it is discontinued or only a scrap is left, etc. A few SCs have expected me to call one of our other slammed and understaffed stores to find their fabric, which is kinda awkward because I'd have to spend so much time waiting on hold. Whatever...a lot of people don't realize that a particular fabric print or line has a short lifespan, like clothing in a store. You can't go back to a clothing boutique and expect to find an exact replacement for your favorite blouse you bought two years ago. Some prints we have carried since the dark ages, and others we're lucky if we ever see another bolt after the first sells out.

Then of course there's other fun variables like differences between dye lots (like one batch of cookies is a little different from the last) and changes in manufacturing (often to a cheaper,thinner base fabric to save money). People think they can come in and find something they bought even last year...nope! Or that they can easily find a perfect match to whatever random fabric or dress they brought in...good luck!

Not only is the Arts and Crafts /DIY thing a vague category that may dabble a bit in other disciplines, there's just so damn many different crafts, even if you just count the traditional ones. We're simply not going to carry every assortment and specialty item for any obscure pursuit from paper quilling to shell carving to marquetry. If we did, it would look like Indiana Jones's vault.

Maybe people are just spoiled by mega-supermarts and online department stores where you really can buy anything from milk to bullets in the same transaction? And have it delivered to your door? What a time to be alive!

[Monterey Jack]

Do you sell hubcaps for a '72 Pinto hatchback?

Do you have the one with that guy who was in that movie last year...?

[wolfie]

Do you sell hubcaps for a '72 Pinto hatchback?

What do you mean you don't have a distributor cap for a '96 Elantra? Or a clutch for an '83 Corvette?

[Sparklyturtle]

When someone ripped the mirror off my 95 Geo Metro, I figured I'd never find it on the shelf anywhere since it's for such an old car, so I ordered it on line. Got it in two working days, too, and it took me and Turtleguy about 20 minutes to put it on, part of which was taken up with him looking for the right screwdriver. (I watched a video on how to install it. Easy.)

[wolfie]

Guess nobody got the joke - NOBODY sells either of the parts I mentioned. '96 Elantra has distributorless ignition ("wasted spark" system with 2 cylinders per coil), and due to delays in getting the 4th generation ready, all but one (which is owned by GM and resides at the Corvette museum in Bowling Green KY) of what should have been '83 Corvettes were either re-serialized as '84 or destroyed - and that one has an automatic transmission.

[Sparklyturtle]

Sorry, Wolfie, I'm just not that car-savvy. While I can tell you quite a bit about my Metro, I don't know that much about cars in general. I can say that I was glad when fuel injection came out, because carburetors were my nemesis.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Guess nobody got the joke - NOBODY sells either of the parts I mentioned. '96 Elantra has distributorless ignition ("wasted spark" system with 2 cylinders per coil), and due to delays in getting the 4th generation ready, all but one (which is owned by GM and resides at the Corvette museum in Bowling Green KY) of what should have been '83 Corvettes were either re-serialized as '84 or destroyed - and that one has an automatic transmission.

Speaking of the Corvette Museum, how far did they get on repairing the vehicles that were damaged some time back after the incident with the sinkhole?

[Food Lady]

I work in a big box store that's not Mart of Walls. People ask if we carry paint. Uh, nuh.

[Trixie]

I get people coming in asking if we have a pharmacy. Uh, it's kinda in our name so yeah?

I guess I should add this sort of update to the story. The same exact can of tomato and chilies that I found online I found on our shelf. Again, I'm not really sure what this girl was originally looking for but I didn't find anything different by "looking on the computer".

[Smapti]

A lot of the product availability questions I get asked at the Store fall into one of two categories; stuff that you wouldn't think someone would have to ask if a grocery store carries it, and stuff that you can't imagine why someone would think a grocery store carries it, and I'm not sure which one boggles me more.

The first category isn't people asking me where stuff is. I get that, because we're about as big as a grocery store can get without getting into Sprawlmart/CostMo/Mayor Frederick territory and it it takes most of our own employees months or years to memorize where everything is (until the Powers That Be move it somewhere else because Reasons.) They're asking whether we have it at all. I've seriously had people ask me "Do you sell milk?", "Do you sell eggs?" "Do you have bread?", "Do you have fresh vegetables?", and the like - basic staples that you shouldn't have to ask if a grocery store has it, because it's a grocery store. A subset of this category is people who will stare at an endcap display of, say, 2-liter Pepsi bottles, and ask if this is all the soda we sell (because, you know, in a grocery store with 100,000 square feet of floor space, we decided we'd only carry one flavor of soda, in one brand, in one size.)

The other category is the one that really baffles me. As I said, we're not a hypermarché. We sell food and food accessories. We have a small amount of non-grocery merchandise - stationery, paperbacks, magazines, motor oil, seasonal crap - but we're not a one-stop shop. We do not sell shower curtains, lawnmowers, pants, hair dryers, bicycles, board games, leather, iPhone accessories, refrigerators, or Xbox games (all of which are actual things actual customers have asked me for).

And as a side note; no, we didn't move the pharmacy to somewhere else in the store. We don't have a pharmacy. We've never had a pharmacy, and I can say this with authority because I've worked here since opening day. None of our locations have pharmacies, and to the best of my knowledge, the company has not once operated a pharmacy in any of its locations since the day it was founded. So no, you didn't get your prescription filled here last week.