There was a time when that was definitely not the norm. You looked a book up in a big Books in Print volume and an order could take quite a long time to come in. Yes, the situation improved over time with certain big city bookstores and then Barnes and Noble prior to Amazon. But I can certainly remember a time when getting things generally that weren't in local stock took considerable effort and time.

I would be fine ordering from a local store and waiting but not if they are going to charge me full price as if they had to keep stock on the shelves.

Back in the day (round these parts anyway) books were always full price [1].

Nowadays, I'm not going to pay full price to wait for a week either, but there are alternatives to Amazon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement