I'm in my 50s and I was explaining to someone in her 20s the other day how old style clothing and department stores used to keep only a small portion of their merchandise on the sales floor, and that most of their stock would be back in the stock room and you'd have to ask a sales clerk to go out back and see if they had a particular item in your desired size, color, etc.
She looked at me like I was an idiot and asked why the heck would a store not put as much stock as possible "out there" for customers to buy, and I was sorta stunned that I didn't have a good answer for her.
Does anyone have a good answer, or is my memory of the old days not entirely accurate? More recently, I definitely remember that stores like Service Merchandise used to have only one of a particular item on display, and if you wanted to buy it you'd have to go to a computer kiosk within the store, enter the item number, proceed to the "pick up" area and wait for employee to bring you a boxed version of that item from the storeroom. Again, what was the idea behind that? Decreased theft, perhaps?
She looked at me like I was an idiot and asked why the heck would a store not put as much stock as possible "out there" for customers to buy, and I was sorta stunned that I didn't have a good answer for her.
Does anyone have a good answer, or is my memory of the old days not entirely accurate? More recently, I definitely remember that stores like Service Merchandise used to have only one of a particular item on display, and if you wanted to buy it you'd have to go to a computer kiosk within the store, enter the item number, proceed to the "pick up" area and wait for employee to bring you a boxed version of that item from the storeroom. Again, what was the idea behind that? Decreased theft, perhaps?