madame - i do agree with you!
good booksellers (of every genre) are worth their weight in gold.
I was referring to the chains themselves, not the workers.
In chains, the topsellers are given precedence and the really good books that booksellers want to recommend have to be proven first (ie, bookseller says "i love this book can we stock it" manager says "if you can sell it we can stock it" bookseller then spends all working hours handselling it.)
You have to remember my position is the reason I started my own shop is that I had seen Ottakar's be taken over by Waterstone's and the beautiful, autonomous shop (part of the chain) which I loved working for, going from a shop that really cared about what the local people wanted to buy, to a shop that had to put 3for2s at the front, and the best sellers right there, in as many places as possible in order to maximise sales.
It was only when the last boss left, that there finally started to be change and go back to the Ottakar's ethos of matching the book to the person, not the "chain theory" of matching the person to the book.
It's sooo much better now than when I left, but I watched so many of my colleagues go from happy, excited booksellers to bored, miserable shop assistants.
It was horrible. 