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Bits and Bytes
December 30, 2008
By Gregory M. Peiguss
Databases Gone Wild
With all of the conveniences of the modern world sometimes things can
and will go awry. This
personally happened to me over the holidays last week.
I’ll spare you the major details of how I arrived where I am
today, but here’s a little background.
It all started with the purchase of a new television.
I had been shopping this thing for quite some time, looking for
the best technology and getting the most out of my dollar.
Several hours were spent looking online, researching, pricing,
etc… So when I decided to
“pull the trigger” I felt like I had made a very nice purchase, a good
television, and a good price.
So after the thrill of hauling it home, dragging it into the
house, moving the old TV out, and placing it right where I wanted it,
the fun part began.
I decided that the myriad of cables that connects the A/V equipment
needed to be organized.
Years of quickly swapping stuff in and out just left a mess.
So after quite some time of figuring out what I wanted to do and
a couple of zip ties it looked very nice.
Everything came on nicely, and I decided to sit down and see what
was on, then…something was very wrong.
The new TV offered many more features than the previous tank that
sat in my living room, mainly with respect to the audio.
I noticed that the surround sound was not working just quite
right. So I dug out all of
the equipment, made sure the connections were correct, and after some
troubleshooting, I discovered that the audio receiver was not working
properly. The “boss” and I
made the decision that since we have a new TV it would be a shame to not
have great sound to go along with it.
So back to the computer…
After some research I quickly found an adequate replacement for the
receiver. Not too expensive
and it was on sale! I was
bound and determined to put this adventure behind me so I ordered it up!
Instead of having it shipped to me, I opted for the in-store
pickup. I knew since it was
just before Christmas the stores would be crazy and I wanted to get in
and out quickly.
I placed the order online <I’ll leave the retailer anonymous>, waited
for my initial e-mail saying that it was processed.
Then I got my second e-mail saying it was ready to be picked up.
Now all of this took about half an hour so I was ready to go when
the e-mail came down. It
was later in the afternoon and decided that we would grab some dinner
while we were out. The
whole clan packed up and we were out the door.
It was snowing, roads weren’t that great, but heck I was on my
way for some food and my new toy.
We arrived at the store, went to the “In-Store” pickup, handed the
Customer Service representative my e-mail conformation, and she said
she’d be right back, they were grabbing it from the back.
In the meantime, I happened to glance around the store and
noticed the check-out line was snaking around the store like an ill
tempered congo line. I
thought to myself, “man I’m glad, I’m not in that line”.
As other customers began to arrive at the “In-Store” pickup the
clan moved over to the side as we were waiting in the queue for our
purchase. Well 5 minutes
quickly turned into 10 minutes, then 15.
The proverbial “red flag” went off in my head when the CSR came
back and said they were still looking for it.
I decided to take a jaunt around the store to see if they had any
sitting on the shelf to expedite the process.
No such luck. After
30 minutes the CSR came back and said they didn’t have any in stock and
they were sorry. Hmm…I
placed the order online, they said it was in stock, they charged my
credit card, I got the order confirmation, and I was told to come and
get it. So after some
formalities regarding the charge to the credit card and a little
attempted haggling I was leaving the store empty handed, in the snow,
hungry. In a nutshell, we
went across the street to their competitor, paid and extra $10 dollars
and were in the store for 5 minutes.
The extra $10 dollars spent was worth much more than the time and
frustration spent waiting.
In the background of all of this you have databases which control just about everything nowadays. They manage the pricing, ordering, reporting, and of course in my circumstance, inventory. For the most part these systems are managed like a finely oiled machine; the computer is not going to lie to you, if it thinks it’s in stock then for the majority of the time it should be there. The only fly in the ointment is the human. Who knows what happened. Somebody didn’t read the printout correctly and gave somebody the wrong part, somebody miscounted the inventory, the order shipped incorrectly and wasn’t caught, it could be a multitude of things.
In the synergy of man and computer sometimes things are not perfect.
10 years ago, I would have had to call the store, and waited on
the phone. Now I waited
this time but with the integration of the internet and databases, the
vast majority of that process has been alleviated.
This is the age of instant information; we need to know now to
make educated decisions…we’re pretty close.
You can e-mail me at anytime at g@219.com
Gregory M. Peiguss
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