What's mildly irritating you today?

[ZenGum]

Dumb-arse major retailers.

Twice in the last few days I have browsed a junk-mail catalogue, seen something I wanted, gone to the shop, and found they have sold out. In one case, didn't get that product sent, in another have had it four four weeks and have sold out, even though the catalogue only went out today.
In both cases these were major national retail chains. All decisions are made centrally and well in advance. The staff at the store had nothing to do with ordering or delivery, had no idea if or when any more such products would come in, had no way of finding this out or requesting a product, and had customers like me fairly often.

So what is bugging me is partly the inconvenience of not getting what I wanted, but also the failure of the system. This is supposed to be a capitalist system with efficient markets connecting me, consumer, with manufacturer, via retailer. What a load of FAIL. In reality it is like a soviet command style economy with no responsiveness to demand or bottom-up feedback.