>Is it? That's 15 minutes of a customer not spending money, and 15 minutes of a staff person dedicated to giving back money to a customer, rather than generating more revenue.

That would be true if the customer service area was isolated inside an empty boring room, but at Macy's, it's out in the open on the store floor and surrounded by merchandise. Waiting in a boring line means eyes that wander to adjacent displays and stands.

Well, making returns painful leads to less returns, to a certain logic. But it surely also leads to less sales, so I'm not sure which effect is greater.