In over a decade of patronage, I cannot recall ever having a single successful conversation with a staff member (other than "These books, please.") The problem

In over a decade of patronage, I cannot recall ever having a single successful conversation with a staff member (other than "These books, please.") The problem with big box booksellers is that they can't possibly win on customer service, because their customer base is too diverse, and no single employee can begin to satisfy the customer service needs of such a broad range of tastes and needs until they've spent years both learning the store's inventory and building a mental model of customer types and their preferences. But it's a retail job and the rewards are meager, so there's little incentive to become this ideal bookstore employee, though they do exist; the employee you do end up with is either a thwarted English major who despises you (this was once me, I'm sorry to say) or the avid reader of bestsellers -- and if that's not a good fit for you, too bad. The achievement of Amazon is that they've actually done a decent job of automating what an ideal generalist bookseller does. (Specialty bookstores are another story. In those cases, you can more readily assume that the preoccupations of the bookseller and the customer will align.)