Here’s some free advice for you: If you ever call Books a Million to find out if they have a particular book in stock, make sure the person you talk to actually has the book in their hands before you make the trip.
Last night the family visited BAM in search of some new books for our daughter. She loves story time, but she’s getting a bit bored with her current selection. There were a couple of BAM coupons in our Sunday paper, so we figured it was the perfect time to add to our library.
Once we arrived at our preferred casa de libros y del café, I moseyed over to the science fiction section to look for a book that just came out recently. I couldn’t find it, so I went to the customer service desk to see if they could help. “The computer says we have six of them in stock,” said the helpful girl behind the counter. “It would be in the science fiction section over there.”
I said “I was just looking there and couldn’t find it. Do you happen to know exactly where it is?”
The clerk said she’d be happy to take a look, but warned me that their computer was “way behind” and not always accurate. She looked for a few minutes in the same spot where I had looked earlier and finally gave up, apologizing for the inconvenience. “No problem,” I said. “Thanks for looking.”
Later, after I had taken my turn chasing our daughter around the store while trying to show books to her to gauge her interest, I spied another clerk working in the area of the sci-fi section. I told him that someone else had tried to find the book for me and that the computer said they had six copies in stock, and asked if he might know where they were hiding. Like the first clerk he was incredibly helpful and stopped what he was doing to try to track down the book for me.
“They were right here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the sci-fi shelf. “I know because I’m the one who put them there.” He looked in several other spots in the store and eventually gave up. I asked him about the accuracy of the store computer and he said “It’s bad. Really bad.”
I’m no retail expert, but it seems to me the purpose of having a computer inventory system is for accuracy and speed of updates.
I’m just glad I didn’t call ahead and make the trip just to pick up that book.
