And I don't know about you folks, but the last few times I had to go to a hobby shop it was exceedingly painful. The minimum wage worker had no freaking idea what he was doing.
Over the past 20 years of RC, I've had a total of 3 guys at 3 working at 3 different shops that knew anything at all. Even then, they were heavily biased to one brand or another. It is kind of normal having people work at stores that know little about what the things are and how they relate to one another. Although, with such a niche hobby, every store I've gone to have had "arts and crafts" guy as well as "RC parts" guy. With the downtime they have between customers, you'd think they would look at manuals or something... I guess when I go to sams club to buy a TV, I don't expect the guy getting it from the back for me to know the specs of it and how it was rated at cnet. Then again, if I go to a automotive parts store, I do expect the guy behind the counter to know there's a difference between Ford and Chevy...