Ya I find it wild that Walmart employees for example run around an actual Walmart for fulfillment. Can’t be worth it.
Showed up at the Walmart thinking I could just pick it up right away. Turned into a huge big thing. The staff only goes around 1-2 times a day to fulfill these sorts of orders so I would have ended up waiting.
I ended up buying the last one on the shelf, which was mine anyway, and cancelling the online order. I wonder what would have happened if someone else bought it first.
I see this more as iterating on an idea to provide this service, and what I experienced, is the MVP.
Source: worked in a few Walmart back rooms picking and binning among other things. The was about 8 years ago so things are likely a little bit different. Hopefully better since shelf max counts were always way off or we'd get flooded with freight and lose stuff in the bins.
I actually order online for pickup to ensure no one else buys it if there is only a few of the item in stock.