Wait though, that gardening books for a crockpot manual trade kinda proves the opposite of what you're saying. Nobody gave advice there, they just swapped stuff with no talking at all. The free shelf works because there's zero pressure, sure, but it's not really about asking for help, it's about taking a thing and leaving a thing. The harder part is the actual asking, and I've seen swap shelves where people still don't talk, they just grab and go. Getting folks to say "hey I don't know how to do this" takes something more than a no-sell table, it takes somebody standing there being open first.

That Micro Center guy saved you a headache. I had a zip tie cranked down on my ethernet cable for like a year and the clip on the end finally snapped off. Swapped everything to velcro after that and never looked back.