"We are bringing the seamless latency of the cloud to the physical world," said James Wu, Amazon’s VP of Brick-and-Mortar Latency. "Customers love the anticipation of a web page loading, so we applied that logic to basic infrastructure. The bathroom door isn’t broken, it is simply optimizing the user journey based on real-time plumbing bandwidth." The incident occurred at the site of Amazon’s planned 225,000-square-foot retail space in the Chicago suburbs, marking the tech giant’s return to physical retail after closing its bookstores in 2022.

The store features several other digital-first innovations designed to disrupt the shopping experience. Customers attempting to pick up a box of cereal found their hands clipping through the packaging because the item’s collision mesh hadn’t fully downloaded. "If you can’t grab the Cheerios, it means your Prime subscription tier doesn’t support high-resolution breakfast," explained Linda Alvarez, Director of Omni-Channel Frustration. "It encourages users to upgrade for tangible food access." Meanwhile, a grandmother in the electronics aisle was seen trying to swipe left on a physical employee who was explaining the extended warranty.

At press time, Henderson was forced to create a new account and agree to updated terms of service before the exit doors would allow him to leave the building.

Inspired by the real story: Amazon is planning to open a massive new retail store in Orland Park, Illinois, to sell groceries and other goods. Read the full story.