There's never a little Dutch Boy's finger when you want one

For the second day running, forty-seven more boxes of last-minute incoming stock. Times like this bring the disjunct between front-line and backstage operations into stark relief. Not really the fault of the staff themselves: over the years their managers have pulled out all the stops to stymie any possibilities of anybody being able to understand the full stock procurement/management process. Consequently, we get unnecessary conflicts like this:

"It says on the system that that book's arrived and is about to be invoiced. Could you find it and get it up to lending? There's a customer here who wants it."

"We've got a hundred and something boxes down here that it might be in. I'll try and find it but it might take a while. If I can find it I'll rush it through the invoicing system and I'll give you a ring to let you know it's in the booklift."

"How long will it take?"

"It depends how long it takes to find it."

"What should I tell the customer?"

"Tell her that we're looking for it but it might be ten minutes or so before we can find or process it."

"What if she doesn't want to wait that long?"

"I'll be as quick as I can."