The other day I went to Barnes and Noble to find a book on a topic I wanted to learn more about. I normally buy books on Amazon but this situation was ideal for a brick and mortar purchase. I wasn’t exactly sure which book to buy and had compiled a short list of those I wanted to review.

So I wandered into the store and walked around for a few minutes until I found the desired section. I then spent a few more minutes looking for the space where my first book should have been located. And of course, it wasn’t there. So I searched through neighboring books to see if perhaps it was put on the shelf in the wrong place. No luck. I repeated the same process, with the same results, for the second book I was hoping to browse. My search for the third and final book was successful.

While I found that last book to be interesting, I was really hoping I’d have at least a couple of choices. So I walked over to the check-out counter just a few feet away and approached a Barnes and Noble representative who was unoccupied as there was nobody in line. I asked him if he could look up a couple of books to see if they were in stock. His response: “Customer Service is upstairs.”

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