It likely depends on the HF store because a good store manager is the key. I'm fortunate to have a brand spanking new HF store in a brand new free standing building about a mile away from me. This store is a big upgrade on some of the older locations in rundown strip malls.
When it was being built, it seemingly took forever. Some wags on the local social media kept making cracks about it, saying it was taking so long because they were building it with HF tools and predicting it would fail as no one wanted their ****. The joke is on them. This store is busy 7 days a week from open to close. The manager is awesome and he hired a great crew of people with excellent customer service skills. You'll get a greeting when you walk in the door. Regulars offers of help finding things as you wander the aisles. They'll even tell you which are the best products and the ones to avoid.
I have noticed a lot of bare hooks because things are selling at a good clip. Last week I needed a set of ⅜ drive deep sockets in metric, and decided that for a buck or two more than the perfectly adequate Pittsburg sockets, the Quinn brand seemed worth it only to find that hook was empty. The SAE sockets next to it had plenty. I asked the nearest HF guy if they had any metric in back, he pulled out a little gizmo, scanned the bar code and said, yup, be right back. He came back with an armload for the the hook and handed me a set. He told me they restock the shelves every night after closing and by the next afternoon some stuff is already wiped out, with the Icon stuff being one of the fastest sellers. He asked me if I originally wanted the Icon deep sockets and had settled for the Quinn? Told him nope, the Quinn's were what I came in for. He just smiled and said "good choice" and asked if I needed anything else.
