What part of NOT in stock do you fail to comprehend??

[Ironclad Alibi]

Another story about checking in the back room.

And here is a picture of what everyone thinks the back room looks like. And another picture.

[Andara Bledin]

For those of you who have to hold stock due to advertised specials or the like, use the word "available" as opposed to "in stock". You can be truthful and most people won't ever notice the difference.

^-.-^

[jjllbb]

Then he asked if another in the area had one. I managed to find one but he expected us to drive the 20 mile round trip to go get it for him. I told him we couldn't do that and at that point he gave up.

I'm surprised the let SC that go. So often i hear SC's whine and complain about what horrible customer service we have that we don't go do all their shopping for them.

[Shalom]

Sometimes there is stuff "in the back"... I was at the Concentric Circles a couple of weeks ago, and they were out of #4 diapers. I flagged down a worker and asked her if there were any "in the back", and she said she'd check. Pulls out a telxon and fiddles with it a bit, and says the machine claims she's got a couple more boxes in the stockroom, and she'd go back and check. I loiter in the area for maybe five minutes, and sure enough here she comes with two more boxes of diapers... I thanked her and tossed one in my wagon, and she put the other on the shelf.

Now my store, on the other hand, very obviously does not have any "back"; what you see is all there is. Yet people still ask me if there's stuff in the back when they can't find stuff on the shelf.

(Now the basement, that's another story...)(no pun intended)

I don't mind too much asking if someone comes to me and asks "You don't have any of [item] on the shelves. Do you have any in back?". There are times where our store hasn't had the time to unpack a delivery and so while it's in the system, it may not be on the shelf.

The auto parts stores around here do keep most of the actual auto parts behind the counter. The public part of the store has the washer fluid, motor oil, wiper blades, cheap tools, fuzzy dice and so on, but if you want, say, a heater core for a 1988 Chevy T-10, that's going to be in the back and they'll have to dig it up and bring it out to you, if they even have it in the first place.

(Sometimes they bring you the wrong part, too. I had one experience like this recently which probably deserves its own thread in Sightings. I was looking for a distributor cap for the aforementioned Chevy, which used to be in the open shelves, but they had taken them off to make room for ten more brands of car wash powder or something equally useful. The guy goes in the back and comes out with a box containing a part that's totally unlike the part on my truck: mine screws on, theirs has retainer clips. They insist that their part is correct, because the computer says so; I show them the one I took off my truck, and they say that someone must have installed a distributor from some other kind of car in my truck, because theirs is the correct one because the computer says so. Just one more example of the wonderful phenomenon wherein reality conflicts with what someone "knows", and they refuse to accept reality. I finally just tell them I want my money back and head off to another branch of that chain in a different part of the city. The box they give me has the exact same part number as the one the first store tried to give me, but lo and behold, the part actually in the box matches the one that I have on my truck. How the first store got the wrong cap in the right box I have no idea. That branch has since closed down, not that this surprises me; every time I tried to get parts there I wound up tearing my hair out. Only downside is that they were the last parts store in walking distance of my house, so now I can't take some vital piece of the engine to the store with me unless I drive another car or my bike.)

Now if I go to the computer to check and the computer doesn't have it listed as being in stock, then we do not have it. Plain and simple. The people who whine "Are you sure?" after I check the nationally connected and networked inventory tracking system which tells me where a part is or when it is due in and even what fricking state the truck carrying the gorram thing is in at the time...those honk me off.

I think I can see where they might get that idea from, though. I've had instances where my computer says there is some item in stock that is not, in fact, anywhere in the store; if it's not there when the computer says it is, why shouldn't it be there when the computer says it ain't?

[RootedPhoenix]

I've had instances where my computer says there is some item in stock that is not, in fact, anywhere in the store; if it's not there when the computer says it is, why shouldn't it be there when the computer says it ain't?

I know that at the Land of Red and Khaki, the systems updated only every day or something, so the computer could say you had five, but you might not have any at all.

It was frustrating. I could check the stores in the area, but I had that same iffy assurance that they had any at all. I told people to go and call the other store to make sure they actually had <item> in stock.

It's the sort of thing that undermines those who have up-to-the-minute information.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I know that at the Land of Red and Khaki, the systems updated only every day or something, so the computer could say you had five, but you might not have any at all.

That's the way it works at the swamp. On-hands update only after the store has been closed down for the day.

So just because the system says we have a quantity of something in the store, doesn't mean we'll actually have it. You have to check for backroom locations first, and even then there's no guarantees.

[mattm04]

I had a custoemr ask about a particular item. I checked hte back, nothing. When I return their is another customer behind them.

me: Sir, we are out of X. I is suppoed to bin on on <date>.
C: thank you.
SC: Do you have any of X?
Me: We are all out. It is supposed to be in on <date>?
SC: How do you know?
me: the custoemr in form of you asked me the same question.
SC: Check agggaaaaaaaaaiinnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!
me: Ok.

I got in back, chat with a CW for a minute and return to find the SC missing. Grrrr.

[Jay 2K Winger]

The wholesale club doesn't keep anything in The Back. Any merch we have in The Back is damaged, defective, or is out-of-code (read: being sent back to the manufacturer). The Back at the store is too full of empty pallets, our maintenance guys' cleaning supplies, the demo cage, and trash to put any valid merch there.

What functions as our store's The Back is the high steel. We store all our backstock up in the steel. Which can be even more of a pain than searching The Back, since the backstock is not necessarily kept in the same aisle as the merch itself, so the search requires an employee to go up and down almost every aisle in the store, neck craned back to look up at the steel to try to find whatever-the-hell.