Local bike shops: are they all bodgers?

I have limited experience of cycling and very little experience of bike shops. But once again I take a bike for repair and get a bodge job done. Does this word exist in Scotland or England? Where I come from it means a botched or kind of slaphazard job. 

The other half's newly acquired Union is taken to a new local bike shop because a pedal keeps falling off, the thread on the crank seems stripped. The bike shop guy replaces the crank. But after this, the crank and pedal on the other side can no longer clear the chain guard. So the bike shop guy's fix for this is to remove a bit of the chain guard. His explanation is that the bike must have been left leaning on something. But when pressed further his only answer is 'dunno'. So the pedals turned fine before he touched it, but don't now but he has no explanation. Nor does he have any proposal to fix, beyond taking more bits of the chain guard off.

The Union, a fine Dutch ride

I'll take the Union to a different local bike shop.

The other shop can be pretty bodgy too, but they are cooler and more friendly so I don't mind so much. On my own bike they have bodged my gears a bit. My Shimano 7 gear shifter jammed. They replaced with an 8 gear shifter. It's what they had in the shop. Another time they replaced my chain but then couldn't get it so it would go on to my super-low gear. "No-one could use that gear anyway" they told me. Well, as a person who likes to ride up all inclines without getting out of my seat, I could use that gear. But the guy was cool and I didn't want to appear to dorky with my stay-in-saddle style so I live without my super-low gear. Now I am down to six gears on my eight gear shifter.

As far ask I can tell this is normal bike shop service. Perhaps bike repair is not about perfection but more about making do. Perhaps I should learn to do this bike fixing myself.