Inventory problems?

Time for another in my long line of "what wrong with company X" posts... but this time, it's for a pair of rivals, Home Depot and Lowes. I started with a pair of seemingly simple tasks... find a new drain cap for the shutoff valve for one of my outside spigots, and also find a 32 gallon trash can (winter drivers were less than kind to the old can).

So, off to Home Depot I go... locate the garbage cans briefly, then head off to plumbing for that drain cap. I swear, I looked up and down those aisles for the better part of an hour, finding all sorts of things that wouldn't quite work, but not the exact item I needed. Disgusted, I decide to hit the Lowe's a half-mile down the road.

This time, I suss out the drain caps first. Of course, they only sell them in a two-pack of different sizes, guaranteeing that you get one useless bit to pay for in the process... but, at least I found what I was looking for. Then, I go to search for trash cans... strangely, they have multiple stashes of a particularly cheap trash can (no proper handles, just handle-like indents in the can) scattered across the store, but the rest of the trash cans are squirreled away with cleaning products. Anyways, I find a likely-looking mid-range trash can... only to discover that they have no lids for those cans anywhere in sight. Well, I'm not about to shell out for the high-end trash cans (strange that such a thing even exists), the low-end cans are a joke, and the mid-range cans are lidless... so, I take my drain caps to the checkout, then head back to Home Depot.

Back I go to the spot I found the trash cans earlier... much nicer selection than Lowes, there's a couple of different cans that will do the trick for about the same price... and this one even has wheels and handles that lock the lid down. Wait a sec... where are the lids?!? Again, I'm given the choice of paying for the high-end cans, or settling for a lesser can, because the store doesn't have lids for the cans they're selling. Oh well, at least the lesser can here has actual handles, so I settle.

So, two home stores, more or less equal in stature, and two items to buy... one item, one store doesn't carry, the other makes you buy extra that you don't need. The other item, neither store can keep track of all (2) of the pieces necessary to sell a complete item. I know my experience isn't typical (or at least, I hope my experience isn't typical), but still, when you can't even keep a relatively close count of number of lids to number of cans for something that takes up as much retail space as a trashcan, you have to wonder how nobody's coming along and eating their lunch for them.