Actually, it was 2 shops.
On Monday, I called a couple ships close to my work asking if they carried chain ring spacers. I have some cranks and rings and wanted to build up a triple.

The first shop was confused when I asked if they carry the spacers by themselves or as a package with bolts.
They said I should bring everything in and they would take s look.

The second shop was nuts- it took almost 5min of talking to get the mechanic to understand what I wanted. I kept saying 'the spacers that you use when attaching a small ring to a double to make a triple. The holed are drilled out. 'He finally said 'oh you mean chainring spacers?' As if I hadn't said that a dozen times.
The mechanic then asked if I knew I was building up something old. I told him I knew it's with components from 85 thru 90. He then said 'that stuff is at least 8 years old, we haven't carried triples like that in years.'

He suggested the local collective, and I agreed and said its closed on Monday which is why I wanted to see if the shop had anything.


I hadn't expected them to have spacers, I was just hoping they did. I don't expect them to carry anything old for me to buy at any one time.
But I would expect a mechanic to at least know what I was describing in less than 5min since there are millions of bikes still in use with older triples.

Oh well.
Some scrounging thru small bins at the collective yesterday netted me everything I needed for a whopping $2.50 so I bought cables as well to make it worth the transaction cost.