I'm going to say "Not particularly."

I can remember when buying a Santana tandem at a local shop the sales person stopped talking to us so he could wait on a fellow who wanted a wheelset built. I might not have been his in his target customer group but, at the time, I thought that tandem was all of the money in the world. The last two bikes that I bought at an LBS I had difficulty convincing the sales people that I really was interested in a better than entry level bike. Eventually I bought my mountain bike from a different shop simply because I didn't feel like I was being taken seriously enough. All of this was after I had amassed decades of riding experience. I can't imaging how someone over 40 with no riding experience or knowledge must feel.

Since that time I've bought several recumbents all via internet. I've had no such issues there - maybe it's because they can't see how old I am.

In the interest of full disclosure, our experience buying a recumbent trike for Mrs. Grouch was MUCH different. We called first to be sure of when they were open on Sunday and walked in knowing pretty well what we wanted. The owners definitely gave us the attention that I thought we deserved. I told them that, if they could show Mrs. Grouch how she could load the trike into her Saturn car, we'd buy it. They did and we drove the Greenspeed trike home.

I've got pretty good relations with the shop owners near my home, I just don't buy anything but the most mundane stuff from them. Mostly the stuff that I buy is so far out of the mainstream that nobody carries it and I'm picky about buying exactly what I want.

Whew! I didn't realize there was that much resentment built up in there. It was good to let some of it out.