One of the most amusing things I do from time to time is observe how people interact with each other.

When I find myself in large groups — especially if I do not know most of the people around me — I simply stand back and watch.

I learned this hobby in airports, where there is not much else to do, but I have begun applying it to other places such as at the doctor’s office, sporting events and church.

Of all the places I have done my people watching, I have concluded there is one place that brings out the worst in people — retail stores.

I don’t know what it is about these places — maybe it is the piped in music — that make about 70 percent of customers act like jerks.

There are the people who think they own the place and should not have to wait on anybody. They expect the employees to drop anything the employee is doing — including assisting other customers — to tend to their whims.

You have people who are impatient if there is more than one person ahead of them in the checkout lines. They always say, “When you have this many customers you should have more cashiers.”

The problem with this is that in order to have every register open the store has to pay wages to the cashiers and that drives up cost to the customers — many of which already complain of high costs.

You get people who get mad because the store runs out of a product that was advertised as “limited quantities available” and are mad when they come in several days after the advertisement was in the newspaper or on television to find the store is out of the product.

They like to say, “You should have enough for everybody that wants one.” They seem to think that stores have a magic way of knowing exactly how many people want a product but deliberately order less in an effort to anger the customers who come in late.

These customers are especially prevalent the day after Thanksgiving when they come to the store at 6 p.m. to find the $200 laptop in the newspaper sold out several hours earlier. I’ve got a news flash for these customers — all the “crazy” people who began camping out the day before were able to purchase the laptops because they knew the computers would not be available by the time you arrived at 6 p.m.

Trust me, I know what I am talking about. In addition to shopping on a regular basis, I spent a few years working at a national home improvement store.

Customers do deserve respect from the employees, because if it were not for the customers, the employees would not get a paycheck.

That does not mean, however, customers get to treat the employees as lowly serfs to do their bidding — society evolved beyond that point several hundred years ago.

Just remember the next time you are at a store and you are frustrated don’t take it out on the employees. Many times the problems you are complaining about are beyond their control.

Besides, retail employees will go the extra mile for the calm and understanding customer because those are the best customers to deal with.

Unfortunately, they are few and far between.