Because I work in the financial district, I’m not far from the Borders store on Wall St. Since one of my Christmas presents was a Borders gift card, I went by today during my lunch hour to pick up the WoW strategy guide. I thought I’d be smart and find out whether or not they had it first, so I used their store inventory search before I went and confirmed that it was in stock (although the limited edition wasn’t).

I got there and found the games section in the store and spent about ten minutes crouched on the floor trying to read all the titles (I guess they assume that only dwarves and toddlers buy strategy guides) before concluding that it wasn’t in that section after all. When I went to the information desk and they couldn’t find it either, I asked why it had shown up as in stock when I searched their inventory. “Oh,” says Captain Fucknuts, “Those results aren’t real time!”

So here’s my question: I’m told that the inventory search on the Borders Stores website and the inventory search in their stores are one and the same, and if neither is real time, then what the hell good is it? What possible use could an inventory system have if not to tell you what is in the store’s inventory?

They helpfully offered to order the guide for me and told me it would arrive within two to three weeks. I told them I’d rather get ten bucks off at Amazon if I’m going to wait two to three weeks, and then I left. But I’m still irritated that I wasted my lunch hour in a store full of humans when I could have just ordered the fucking thing on the web in the first place. I should have known better than to choose real world interaction over the Internets - that’ll learn me!