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I think retail encourages this type of behavior by having large numbers of unskilled workers all fighting for the small amount of decent paying positions, and then topping that off with paper thin profit margins due to business decisions made up higher, this leads to abusive managers floating to the top (of store management, district and regional management) as fear is a good way to get the troops inline and carry out the home offices orders. In addition job prospects of a retail front line worker are usually slim.