Today I went to a store as I was interested in purchasing a lavalier microphone to replace my broken one and I checked online ahead of time and saw they had it at a store near me. When I went to the camera section where I thought it should be I couldn’t find it but was greeted by an employee. I asked if they sold lavalier microphones as I couldn’t find the section for it and he told me he never even actually heard of that word before. After searching his computer, he found one but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I showed him the one I saw on the phone and when he entered it in it said they had one. As he walked in circles around the booth he said he didn’t see any and that it was probably just an error.
Afterwards he asked one of his colleagues if he had seen that item and he even looked confused while looking around a bit. The employee then was staring at the wall in the middle of the area as there were more items hanging there. I then pointed as the box as the price matched and sure enough it was the microphone. I ended up buying it.
This happens so often I find especially in stores where if someone doesn’t have the answer they will say it’s an error as an example. But like here, it was simply a matter of the employee not knowing the merchandising layout. In these cases, it’s better to just be honest and tell the customer that you will try to find out if you simply don’t know. Most people are understanding as it looks worst when the customer finds it themselves. You could always just use the “I’m new” excuse too which works better.