Maybe the HD employee who gave up his job for a $10 bribe was the one who needed to learn a life lesson. That short-term thinking isn't always the way to go. If he's young and even marginally intelligent, it will be a lesson learned. If he's stupid, it's a lost cause and he will blame the consequences on everyone but himself.
I would not have let the guy butt in front of me while talking to the employee. We have the busiest HD in the country here, (Sunset Blvd. in east Hollywood), sometimes you need to walk the whole store to find an employee. That would be a fighting situation. But strangely enough, even though it's like the United Nations here, (or maybe because of it), no one is that rude, generally speaking.
