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I think calling it a "toy" is more dismissive than I'd want a salesperson to be if I was the manager. As a manager, I would have preferred the opinion be expressed as, "The Nook Color is the one you want for magazines and children's books, or if you want to do things other than read. If you want to read straight text (e.g., novels, etc.) your best choice is the Nook Classic."
As a customer, though, I'd be appreciative of someone pointing me towards what she thought was the better device (for reading). As for the Office document question, her response might have meant, "Well, if you want Office docs, just convert them to PDF and the Nook Classic is fine." (And the subtext would be, "It's worth the hassle of converting to PDF to use the Nook Classic over the Color.") Now, that might not be true in some people's minds (and I haven't used either Nook, so I can't pass judgment on that), but I would certainly appreciate the honesty, as a customer.
Now, whether the manager would be happy with this salesperson depends on what kind of manager he/she is. I think that a manager who thinks short-term would be angry, but a manager with a longer view would be appreciative. A salesperson who gives an honest answer is more likely to attract repeat business than a salesperson who just tries to put the highest-price gadget in the customer's hands. Now, don't get me wrong. The Nook Color could be a wonderful device for reading e-books, and a customer could be very happy with it. But a salesperson who steers a customer to the Nook Color despite believing it's not the better reading device is more likely to mislead customers in other ways, and that's not good for long-term business.
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