I've often wanted to google the location of items within Home Depot for example. That would be way easier than asking someone, who often doesnt know the answer!
you've got to batch process this task. Just go through employees until you get the answer, or a close approximation. It's still faster than aimlessly searching. Think of it as a kind of meatspace binary search.
I used to be too timid to ask employees, but since I've gotten over that I've usually found that they do know where things are.
Not at Home Depot. The employees there tend to only know where things are in one small section of the store. And for other sections they send you on a wild goose chase where every employee you ask tells you a completely different section and you cannot find what you are looking for in any of them.
I'm sure this varies wildly by locale. In Austin, most employees I've ever asked anything pretty much knew.