Okay, the problem is this:

Create a good, useful layout for the navigation on a system with these traits:

1. An infinite number of potential layers to the navigation, but the practical reality is that there are four layers with products potentially appearing at every level below the primary level.
2. Most products don’t appear until after the fourth level.
   
   Click on a category, click on a department, click on a sub-department, click on a sub-sub department, click on a product, see a product description.
3. There are, right now, 14 categories in the top level navigation.
4. There are something near 3,000 standard products to display.
5. There are two mixed systems of products to display. That is, two databases--one internal filled with books, tests, online courses, and such, the other is a database associated with a product that we use that displays its own online courses, web-based seminars, and the like.
6. Customers who use that product will use the same catalog, but will have the capacity to add their own categories, sub-categories, and products. So this has to accomodate a ridiculous number of possible arrangements from one product in one category to 10,000 products in twenty main categories with six layers of navigation (chosen as a theoretical upper limit, although there will be no such actual limit on products, categories, or levels of navigation).

This is the task that was handed to me yesterday with the request to have the solution deployed by the end of the week.

Fuck.