N and I just had a disturbing “Back in USSR” moment at the local Best Buy. We wanted to buy a refrigerator, a washer and a dryer, which – and correct me if I’m wrong – has always seemed like a fairly big, expensive purchase to me.
We selected our appliances and proceeded to pay for them. And that’s when problems started. The washer I selected was nowhere to be found. The warehouse and the other stores in the region didn’t have it.
“Just give me the one you have right here in the store, then,” I suggested.
“No, we can’t do this,” the manager said. “We can’t remove items from display.”
“Why not?” I persisted. “It’s right here, I want it, what’s the problem?”
But the idea of selling me the washer “from display” seemed to be too disturbing.
So we decided just to buy the refrigerator. For an hour we walked around the store while the manager struggled with the computer.
“I’m sorry, what seems to be the problem?” I finally asked.
“The system is down. I can’t get the purchase to go through.”
“Can we just pay and you will put the purchase into the computer later?”
“No!” the manager exclaimed. “We have a system and we have to follow the system.”
I always thought that “the system” was called capitalism and was quite simple: I give you money and you give me goods in return. Supply and demand, I demand, you supply. But no, it seems like bureaucracy has penetrated into the most sacred redoubts of the capitalist society. Now people who want to get rid of a significant amount of cash can’t do that until mountains of correct paperwork get filled out.
So we just left having purchased nothing.
“In the USSR we also couldn’t purchase any appliances,” N commented. “But there at least they didn’t torture us by showing us this enormous selection of goods and then refusing to sell them.”
Clarissa's Blog 
“So we just left having purchased nothing.”
This is the correct response. 🙂
What you’ve just experienced is the Soviet-like state of Automatic Supply Chain Management.
They can’t sell you what you want for several reasons: the sales system is tied into a supply chain management system that automatically figures out what to divert from warehouses, which means that inventory control is typically out of the way of direct management. The sales floor staff quite literally have “no script” for this since their actions have been scripted by upper management, and of course deviating from the script tends to result in “actionable results” (such as getting sacked).
The “safe” thing for the sales floor minion to do, in other words, is what you experienced.
That is why what you did is the correct response.
Entire books have been written on the failure of Automatic Supply Chain Management and its somewhat more evil inbred cousin, Customer Relationship Management.
There are now refrigerators that can take an inventory of your currently stored purchases so the refrigerator can put in a top-up order for more of the same. Of course, these are currently an elite-level version of the appliance, but if you live in the right location, you can have your groceries ordered by your refrigerator and delivered to you without any direct intervention.
There are also coffee capsule brewers that work on the basis of scanning an RFID chip or barcode within the packaging, just so the machine knows how many Double Deep-Fried Greasy Wombat Espressos you’re going to need next week.
You’ve heard of contact-free payment cards, now try contact-free reprovisioning of supplies …
Sensible people should recoil in horror from these things. 🙂
LikeLike
I have recoiled in horror, believe me. Brrr, this just sounds completely insane. But this was not at all the kind of refrigerator we wanted. The one we wanted wouldn’t rule our lives. 🙂
LikeLike
That’s probably why you couldn’t buy it. They’re phasing out the refigerators that don’t rule your life.
All this reminds me of “There will come soft rains” dramatized here (no. 10)
https://archive.org/details/Dimension-X
LikeLike
Large corporations getting government favors are perhaps the last bastion of centrally planned economics. Alas, they are an incredibly powerful bastion wrapping itself in the rhetoric of a competitive free market that they have never operated in.
LikeLike
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years!!
LikeLike
Also, in a meeting with some university administrators, it came out that the reason for some weird curricular policy was some oddity in PeopleSoft. We don’t work for our students nor for the administration. We work for PeopleSoft. This seems related to your issue.
LikeLike
Didn’t Marx say that in capitalism people become extensions of the tools they use?
When I was working in an office the temperture outside could be in the 90s but indoors everybody was wearing sweaters because the temperature of the building was maintained for the comfort of the computers. Of course people were sick all the summer if they had to go inside and outside a lot. But the computers were fine.
LikeLike
At least, there was a practical concern at play. At my workplace, people can’t turn off the lights in their offices. I don’t go to the office all summer, but the lights remain on. Maybe computers are afraid of the dark, who knows.
LikeLike
Best Buy may be a special albeit unfortunate case. The company is fragile and there has been speculation in the business press about the 1/3/5 year odds of survival. Companies in this situation tend to cut inventory. Thus if you ask for a highly popular product, no problem. If you ask for something else, there might be a two week delay while the company has the manufacturer ship it to you. Sears does the same thing.
You can check another box store (e.g., Lowe’s or Home Depot) to see if they have what you want, or, if price isn’t an issue, deal with a local appliance dealer.
If computer systems break, all bets are off. These systems are used both to process transactions and to prevent fraudulent use of credit cards. There is no backup system in most stores. No store manager or sales rep wants to be on the hook for a fradulent sale.
LikeLike
They could have pulled success from the jaws of defeat by selling the display unit, at least if it’s a functional one, at a bit of a discount … but they quite literally have no “script” for that.
LikeLike
I always buy things like this from a Sears Outlet Store. There you do indeed buy straight from the floor.
LikeLike
That’s exactly what we did yesterday, actually. 🙂 And now we finally have our appliances. 🙂
LikeLike
Sears may have lost its flagship location in Chicago, but its outlet business marches on …
Of course, eventually they’ll have an app for that. 🙂
LikeLike
You think Best Buy is bad, try Walgreens. Their store managers can’t deviate one jot or tittle from the script without calling corporate headquarters via shortwave and getting two guys in a silo to turn their keys at the same time.
LikeLike
Me, I wouldn’t have wanted the display one because I would have been afraid it had been damaged while being transported around, and people mess with those units.
LikeLike