I've never worked in retail or food service (and after reading this thread, I never will if I can help it!
) but I've observed some good stories (or, rather... bad stories).
At school, we used to refer to what ZTAngel describes as "Lechmere-ing." There was a store near campus called Lechmere (I think they may have been a chain?) that had a 30-day, no-questions-asked return policy. People would buy big-screen TVs a few days before the Super Bowl and return them the day after. Hmmm... (They are now out of business. I wonder why.
)
I used to have a job that required weekly travel, and you should see some of the stuff I witnessed on the airlines. People really do not treat flight attendants well. For instance, I was in a bulkhead row, and the woman sitting next to me had a handbag. Since there are no seats in front of you, all your baggage has to go in the overhead bin - handbags included. This woman did
not want to part with her precious bag. Got into a huge argument with the flight attendant. Finally she was told the plane wasn't taking off unless she put her bag up, so she complied. She then proceeded to ignore the flight attendants for the entire flight.