That was par for the course at every shop I knew, and totally doable since the bikes were mostly built already. It was just difficult to stick to the basics coming from my meticulous home mechanic mindset.

As a matter of fact, I recently bought a bike from Pro's Closet and technically assembled it in 15 minutes like they say. The rest of the hour was spent changing saddles, adjusting the fit, adding pedals/bottle cages/seatbag, and admiring it lovingly.

But yeah, only the top of the line downhill bike in our shop came with disc brakes back then, and the head mechanic built that. I still need to learn how to service those.