I can tell it's spring break. I'm getting spot shortages in product that usually takes months to sell out. Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh have slowed down so much that I'm only bothering to carry one box at a time; I've cut back to 6 boosters of Star Wars miniatures at a time, and so on. So I go in to the store to check this morning, and I'm wiped out of one of the brands of SW, and all my Yu Gi Oh boosters.

Oops. Should have realized that I'd have kids from out of town. About the only thing kids still buy is Star Wars and a few of the card games.

But, glory be, I've sold six starters of Yu Gi Oh that I've been sitting on for months.

Makes me wonder, sometimes, if a little inefficiency can be a good thing. Cause selling those 6 starters is a real bonus, and probably only happened because I was out of the boosters. Seems like that kind of thing happens all the time. They can't get steak, so they buy meat loaf.

Of course, the real answer is to be so efficient that I have enough boosters, and not too many starters. But, since it impossible to order everything right all the time, I have a sneaking suspicion that slacking off once in a while can be a good thing.

I always wonder when I get these weird theories if there is actually a business school case study of such a thing. You know, a law of business I don't know about.

Back when I was doing sports cards full time, I was terribly efficient. I'd get in there and make sure I had all the good cards out for sale. And often, by the time a card got really valuable, I'd be sold out -- a lesser prices. I realized that my competition would be so disorganized, they'd have boxes of unsorted cards laying around, and when a card got really valuable, they'd be able to go in and pluck them out and sell them for more. (What I told myself was that I was using the money to turn over more product, but it's a hard thing to know that you sold your Mark McGwire rookies for .50; and your competition has them for 10.00. On the other hand, I know that I sold dozens of other players for .50 that by the time my competition dug them out, were worthless.)

It was frustrating at the time. But that was one of those rare cases where you could be a complete moron and sell the product. I suspect that being rewarded for inefficiency is the exception, not the rule.