Easy! Let's just make sure the people who stole the two patio sets update the blockchain. I mean, people who steal / ransom / hack bitcoin still update the blockchain, so criminals clearly can follow the rules
Or the customer returned it because it was damaged, so now it is in inventory again.
Or, inventory is batched processes, so it will take at least a few hours before inventory is current.
Etc. etc.
Inventory management is a whole industry of it's own for a reason.
Or the vendor discontinued the item and replaced it with a slightly different one, but they both got put in under the same stock number and are hanging on the same hook.
No matter how much we try to perfect the digital world, the real world will always be messy, and interfaces between the two will always be difficult.
It probably isn’t stolen. It’s more likely delivered to another store, still on the truck, still at the factory, or was sold and not recorded.
Just to confirm - nobody has ever or will ever make a data entry mistake right? Good, I hoped they wouldn't.
Someone buys it. It gets checked out. One of the markers gets scanned, an immutable record is created saying there's still one in stock.
Physical reality has a way of screwing with all the best laid plans of computer systems. As Pat Helland says: there's no transaction rollback when a forklift drives over a box of eggs.