Headscratchers / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 05 E 24 Empok Nor

• When everyone arrives on Empok Nor, O'Brien splits the group into three, assigning each group respectively to look for "must haves," "could use" and "would be nice." This doesn't make any sense. Why assign a whole group of people to specifically look for the least-necessary items? Shouldn't he have assigned each team a prioritized list of items from all three categories, so they'll each look for the "must haves" first and then down the line in order of necessity?
  • Not only that, he first assign's Garak to the "would be nice" team, when it would seemingly make more sense to have some with Garak's knowledge on the "must haves" team instead.