Gatekeeping in the community

Hi all, just had a really weird experience I thought I'd share.

So I'm in the UK and today I was in another nearby city to do some errands and it was one I don't normally visit so I decided to see if there were any homebrew stores nearby as there aren't any in my city I live in. I found one which was a 20 minute drive in the opposite direction of home but I figured why not drop in.

I wanted to visit a shop in person as I recently bought a grainfather but haven't used it yet as I wanted to talk first hand to someone about a recipe when I bought it. So I go inside the store and all the owner of they have any all grain kids they sell that are prepackaged as it is something I have seen stores sometimes do. Or maybe he has some recipes that you can choose from and have the grain crushed for you. Again something I have seen before back home in NZ.

He tells me he doesn't do that as the grain doesn't last long enough for it to be worth it to him but he says he does have crushed grain prepackaged he can sell me and shows me the shelf if the back half of the store. I try to go and have a look at it and he asks me to stay back in the front half of the store. I thought this was a bit weird as how is anyone supposed to buy this grain of they can't look at it.

He then starts talking me through his extract kids that he sells. Apparently these are much better than all grain and no one makes nice beer out of all grain anyway. Basically doing all he can to say I shouldn't be brewing all grain and should just buy his extracts. Another opinion of his on all grain is that you should be making all your recipes yourself so if you don't know what you want then you shouldn't be doing it.

The whole experience was a bit strange to me and quite off putting really. I'm just lucky that I have visited other stores before and had much better experiences because of this was my first experience I would have found it pretty intimidating/off-putting.

Maybe I'll just stick to online retailers for now. Or maybe I won't bother as no one came make nice beer so I may as well not try :D.

So, anyone else has some weird experiences with gatekeepers in our hobby they want to share?