anthonymurray•1mo agoTop Commenter

That time a customer in aisle 6 changed how I organize product guides

I was stocking shelves at my store in Denver when a guy grabbed me and asked why our website showed a different layout than the actual store. He showed me his phone and the online guide had completely different aisle numbers for pipe fittings. How do you all handle keeping digital content matched up with real world spaces when things keep moving around?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_henderson861mo ago

...and that's why I now triple check everything before we even print a new guide, seriously. I had a similar thing happen at my old job where I was in charge of updating the in-store maps and I literally spent a whole weekend moving virtual shelves around only to find out the real shelves hadn't been moved yet. It's like trying to herd cats with bad internet. The worst part was my boss saw me crying over a spreadsheet and just handed me a coffee and said "welcome to retail digital strategy" like that was supposed to help. I still have nightmares about aisle 6 and pipe fittings.

margaretm231mo ago

Oh man, the spreadsheet tears. I had a job once where I was in charge of updating our online inventory system and they told me we were out of stock on something, so I marked it as gone, moved it to the back order list, the whole nine yards. Turns out the warehouse guy just put it in the wrong spot, and we actually had 40 of them. So I spent the next week calling customers to tell them their orders were actually ready, and half of them were so mad they cancelled anyway. My boss just said "well, that's why we do physical counts" and walked off. I still get twitchy around inventory spreadsheets.

dylan_bell1mo ago

And where were you guys when I thought reorganizing my garage would be a fun Sunday project and spent three hours shuffling toolboxes only to realize I'd forgotten where I put the hammer? @holly_henderson86 you've got my sympathy - I once updated my workout database for clients only to find out the gym had swapped the cable machines and the squat racks, and spent a week correcting everyone's directions. So yeah, digital vs. real world is basically a prank war that nobody wins.