I'll take the "reason I only buy razor blades online" as an example. I knew my Gillette was really dull and that I'd been out for going on a week, but kept forgetting to pick some up until I stopped at Walgreen's on the way home. I went to the aisle with the blades and was met with a card, instead of a set of blades. I took said card to the register. Walgreens is so slow; I swear the operate on one employee except when the Pharmacy is open. I get to the front, have the card and a now-annoyed cashier.
Three people behind me, she gets on the speaker and calls for assistance, has me step aside and starts ringing up the person behind me. Three people go through the register when Mr. Break comes up to the front to retrieve my item. He grabs the card, looks dubiously at it, says something quiet to the cashier and disappears. Two more customers later, he's back.
"We're out of this one."
"There were several cards there."
"We're supposed to get more in, today."
So I left. About a week later I remembered to order a few hundred dollars' worth online.
In defense of your post, I've seen it work. Except this last holiday season -- mostly due to the restrictions placed on them by the state I live in -- my local Microcenter usually handles this well. If I've happened upon a sales-person, the item I want is taken to the front/locked up before I get there so at least when I'm checking out, I'm not also waiting on someone to find the thing[0].
[0] That ... on one occasion ... ended up being purchased by someone else since I was visiting the store with my boss from out of town and we ended up spending a solid 5 hours there one afternoon.
This involves paying someone to be the "they" to hand it to you and companies don't want to pay employees if they can possibly avoid it.
The people you are able to find seem to be brand new at the job and are basically useless, even for simple things like getting the right online order picked from the shelf behind them as they have no idea what the organizational system is.
It's not just that you have to pay someone to do this, you have to be able to simply hire a warm body, and right now that seems horribly hard in retail where I am.