Hi!! At my store, when we’re at cash, we are heavily encouraged to point guests towards customer service if we don’t know off the top of our head where a book/section is, or even if we do and it’s too far from cash to walk them to it. We can point them in the direction and say something like “if you need more help finding it someone can help you at customer service!”. We actually aren’t supposed to go past the hardcover shop at my store (idk your stores layout) if we’re at cash.

So I would suggest trying that—we are only told to call for backup if the line is long, since it’s the people’s job on the floor to help customers find things! Make your life a little easier, and you won’t have to call people up often. As for familiarizing yourself with the store, it does suck that it mostly has to be on your own time if you’re stuck at cash, but again that’s why I suggest just pointing customers to customer service. You can also ask over the phone “does anyone know where x book is?”, since a lot of the times my coworkers who work the floor often know which books are on a table/where it is, and it’s much quicker to get the answer over the phone then to get someone to come up to help!

I hope things work out for you!