I walked into Michael's, asked for Basic Grey.........

I try never to ask the Michael's employees for help - they are completely clueless. 

Sorry sister. That's on you. Never ever expect helpfulness at a Michaels. It doesn't exist.

You should mess with them and ask for Tim Holtz.

This. It's funny, but not surprising. I'm sure there are brand names for knitting, painting, crochet, baking... whatever. I don't know what they are. M's is a general craft store. Just being barely versed in even some of those crafts is more than enough. The biggest requirement is *trying* and being able to run a register with a smile.

If you *are* looking though, they do carry some older BG lines, but they're re-branded as Recollections I believe. They're in stacks, as well, not collection packs. HTH!

 they would have sent you down Maya Road.... no wait they wouldnt be able to find that either....

Too funny!!

My Michael's doesn't carry anything other than Recollections for DCWV it seems like. I never see any brands and I wouldn't even bother to ask anyone

I have a story about tim holtz. Went to a hobby lobby, went to the cash register with some tim holtz products and the cashier didn't know if it Was on sale. She asked the front end cashier if the "tim joltz" was on sale.  She couldn't make out his handwriting on the package, 

Too funny but so typical.

If this had been me I would have had to burst out laughing (like I did when reading this).
I agree that at general craft stores I just expect them to work the register well and know what the advertised sales for the week are. I think my M's is "trying", they've had a sign looking for an instructor on Tim Holtz products. I'm curious if it's because corporate wants them to have that class or if it's customer requests.
Speaking of Michael's, I overheard (okay eavesdropped) an interesting conversation between the manager at my local store and one at the store the next city over which is like 30 miles away. The were commenting on the huge amount of Rainbow Loom cases my store had but complete lack of bands while the other store had so many bands the display set up couldn't hold them but absolutely no cases. They were both saying they had been complaining to corporate about the disparity of products they were sent compared to what they sold and how unhappy customers were that they had to travel to another store to get all of what they were looking for. So basically I took away that requesting specific items doesn't do any good there because even if it's a brand/item they carry they only ship it to the stores they want to . . . And it's not the store manager's fault. Usually, as ours used to have a crappy manager that basically ignored the customers.
Sorry this was so long but I wanted to share with those that care as DH and co-workers I mentioned to thought I was nuts to be so interested in Michael's inventory.

That's funny and not surprising. I was at Mikes on Sunday. I wanted to use the extra 20% off entire purchase including sale items coupon but it wasn't valid until 3 pm. I had 10 min to kill so I walked around the store. To my surprise, I saw a sign that said all Silhouette accessories 20% off (I think it was 20%) but the sign was hung nowhere near the Silhouette items, not even close. So I walked back over to the Cricut/SIL aisle and there was no signs for the sale anywhere. A few min later an employee asked me if I found everything and I told her they needed to move the sales signs so that people would know there was a sale. She just looked at me baffled. I literally had to walk her over to the sign and back to the aisle and explain it again. Then I picked up a couple mats and a blade. I would have not made that purchase if I didn't know about the sale.

*snort* I think she's in the wrong profession.

Michaels is a general crafting store. I would not expect every employee to know the specific brands in every department nor should they be required to know.

At least she was willing to help - my Michaels is getting better but they used to be horrible about being willing to assist customers.

Looking for 7Gypsies cracks me up!

But I agree with this^^
I'm crafty Nd could cover many departments, but if somebody asked about cake decorating I'd be clueless!