I had to check what the gold standard McMaster-Carr does: their torque wrench drive size widget is sorted 1/4", 3/8", 1/2", 3/4", 1", 1 1/2". Glorious. https://www.mcmaster.com/products/torque-wrenches/

Now look up impact wrenches.

  1/2 in
  1 in
  1/4 in
  3/8 in
  3/4 in
  7/16 in

It's probably a default ordering or an ordering by an unshown database ID value. It's a small enough set that it doesn't really matter for practical purposes, but I guess it does betray a lack of attention to detail.

SELECT ... ORDER BY RAND()

This is sorted mostly alphabetically with an allowance for people being bad with fractions. That's my guess.

I will not argue with the stock part. When the search _does_ finish, stock info is usually correct IME.

What grinds my gears is the speed of this search, regardless of the phone reception. Even on the desktop it feels like they have a bunch of interns running a sneakernet. Or the website is laden with pointless javascript that slows everything down before the search is actually performed.

I go to the same Home Depot every time. (Well I don't if I can help it, but that's beside the point). There is no reason they cannot store the preferred store in the localStorage or cookies or wherever else. Other stores have figured this out.

Their internal setup was also an absolute mess as of 4 years ago. A horrific hybrid of extremely legacy systems and new systems created around COVID which are both nicer and also deeply lacking in features we needed as floor workers.

I understand that upgrading and migrating to new systems takes time but this process never seemed like it involved anyone on the ground.

its generally in HD stores you never have cell signal or wifi

Home Depot reuses SKUs for different product models. It's a gamble if you'll actually get what you ordered

Nah, I use both the website and their shitty web wrapper app on a regular basis and it's been a dumpster fire for at least the last 2-3 years. 3-5 years ago when they first rebuilt everything it was much more pleasant but at this point it's clear no one is maintaining it and have just let it bloat and rot

> when I'm in my local store it seems like cell connection goes to shit for some reason

It's a giant steel and concrete box, that's probably the reason.

They probably don't have any repeaters. All those metal shelves are going to interfere with the signal. I have the same experience.

Always wondered if this was a deliberate strategy to enable more tracking… but it sounds way beyond the ability of their corporate planning.

I'll bet money any new React/K8s/${WEBSCALE} stuff they're building is still just a wrapper over the same old inventory management they've been using for years...probably something like JDEdwards on AS/400.

It's sadly all too common. I worked at a Fortune50 retailer with a massive IT org. Was on a call one day with one of our most Senior Ent Arch who was excitedly telling me about how "these Java scripts" were the hot new thing and we were building "modern web 3.0 pages" with them. He did not understand the difference between Java and JavaScript or a blockchain branding exercise and SPAs.

I think they made some splashy hires at the time, and they contributed to the Google SRE workbook. Same as Walmart. They definitely tried. Corporate inertia is a killer.

It varies a lot by store. I’ve been to HDs where they’re all useless, and others where there’s a good number of knowledgeable DIYers working there.

I think a lot of people just expect too much from a big box store employee making $17/hr… You go to HD because you have an easy job and you’re as cheap as their MBAs. If you need help, go to a supply house or an Ace Hardware or something.

The store I worked at for a while had a surprising number of real bearded experts, alongside at least a few younger folks who really understood the internal systems. It was great, but clearly was eroding as the experts retired and young folks with no experience were hired to replace them.

I asked an employee for something by part number and described it. The answer he gave was "why the hell would you want that anyways? I've worked here 13 years and never seen one". I found it on a shelf a few levels up and used a grounding rod from the electrical section to spear it and bring it down to ground level

Though they should be on in store wifi. The big steel box store is a faraday cage that doesn't let the internet in.

MSFT Edging

I'm just happy that Best Buy recently added the ability to filter out items they cannot actually sell me. The amount of searches I would do where I had to scroll through page after page of 'not available online' 'not available in store' items in order to find a search result they actually had was ridiculous.

Now Home Depot for some reason just doesn't load on mobile (white screen) unless I disable content filtering in the browser. Classy.