You might need to loosen the shocks while doing the strut rod bushings, but that would require loosening the 3 nuts around the shock, not the nut on top. So there would be no reason to remove the ARC brackets. (Of course, the worker may not have known that.)
However, while swapping the shocks, you certainly would need to remove the brackets.
Sounds like Tire kingdom is the most likely culprit.