Today's photo caption: Smoke 'em if you got 'em.  

Welcome back to Tech Service Today's IT Disaster of the Week series where we showcase the ugliest IT environment our technicians ran into this week. 

While this is hardly what most would consider an "IT environment", it is pretty typical for retail stores where finding dedicated space for anything is a constant challenge - especially around the registers where product vendors all fight to have their stuff visible to encourage impulse purchases.

As this picture reveals, most retail checkout counters have a lot of wiring and/or IT equipment stored directly beneath them. So when you need to troubleshoot, replace, or install new equipment or cabling in retail stores, it often means digging thru merchandise to get the job done.

The great thing about this store is that they had the foresight to allocate space behind the under-counter shelf for the electrical and data wiring. This prevents the merchandise on the shelf from getting shoved into/against the cabling or equipment - an activity that is among the top causes of accidental disconnects in retail stores.

Even though this store provides a dedicate space for IT, our technician still had to dig through the merchandise on the shelf to get to that area...which is the only reason we featured this picture as our IT disaster this week.

In conclusion, if you want to keep your retail network running smoking fast, try to keep your cabling and IT equipment in a dedicated space where those never-ending inventory churns won't constantly butt up against them.