I guess I'm lucky to have multiple local bike shops with helpful employees. A couple shops are just the owner and a long-term employee or two, with perhaps some part-time help on the weekends. One of the bigger shops has a staff of extremely competent full-time employees as well as a ton of part-time sales people, all of whom are enthusiasts from the local cycling community who actually ride the bikes that the shop sells. The latter business model seems to work because sales and service bring in enough money to provide good wages/benefits to the full-timers, and many sales are made by part-timers who have other jobs and are really working for the discount.
I've noticed, as a general trend, that LBS service tends to be better between 10-4 M-F, when the shop owner or managers are likely to be around. I can usually figure out pretty quickly which shops have a bunch of kid employees running amok, and tend to avoid them.