^^^ I attribute most of the blame to the 'drivers education programs'
Almost all of the 90's and beyond learning drivers never had to drive a m/t.

My drivers ed. instructor quickly showed us how to operate a '3 on the tree' and that was it.
Drive it or fail.
A stick shift on a console was a luxury.

I dropped my truck off with new rims and tires at Wal-Mart last weekend. I get a call two hours later that they couldn't get the truck on the lift, so they mount/balance my spare set and left them in the bed.....

When I pick it up the truck never left the parking spot I was at... I thought it was weird, but your experience sounds like what happened to me..... They ended up scratching all 4 of my fresh powder coated rims, and stripped pretty much all of my 32 lug nuts from my last set. Sooo you get what you pay for.

In the long run I'll prolly just do them myself at the auto hobby shop

I am very anti-Discount Tire. Twice in the past couple years, Mrs. Noah has taken her minivan in for their "free" flat repair. But they claimed they could not remove one of the lug nuts because it was cross-threaded. As the only person who works on the minivan, I know for a fact that they're not cross-threaded. Once I had even rotated the tires during an oil change the weekend before (which is how I found the nail in the tire tread); so when I replaced the lug nuts, I made damn well sure they were not cross-threaded. I haven't done it to any other vehicles I've ever worked on over the past 20 years; that's about 4 oil changes per year for 2 decades. My bet is that the monkeys had the air wrench at 300 ft-lbs on righty-tighty, and that's what FUBARed the lug + nut.

So I wound up breaking off the lug + nut, and then I had to replace the wheel stud. And then Mrs. Noah had to go back and still get the tire plugged. Granted the stud's just a $5 part from Honda--I think the lug nut's more expensive than that, but with wheel locks on we have four (now two) to spare--but there is a PITA factor associated with the whole ordeal.

Never again with Discount/America's Tire.

Aside from everything mentioned above...Walmart requires a person to sign a waiver saying that you agree to replacing just the front tires...which (they say) could be a safety hazard.
If I up-graded all 4 tires...wouldn't have to sign..lol.
(Maybe SOP at all tire shops.)

I will admit, I've never left wheels to be worked on at Discount, or any where else for that matter.
When I have tires changed and or fixed at Discount, I stand outside the work zone and watch them like a hawk. So far, it's worked out well for me. Most customers aren't that vigilant from what I've seen at our local shop. Last time I got tires the head guy even had me drive the car out of the lift area which doesn't happen all the time, based on my observations of the operation.

Walmart tire shop
 

I recently needed new front tires on my El Camino. As before I ordered the tires on Tire Rack. I called a local repair shop that I know has a road force tire balancer. I just waited in the lobby as they pulled it in. The mechanic that did the work is building an El Camino and he was looking at mine to see how it is supposed to have the weather stripping mounted.

They mounted the tires and it was all done in 30 or 40 minutes and I was done. Perfect job.