The manager may pay lip service to the whiny customer, but there's little chance that the employee is going to be punished. In fact, they'll probably laugh together about what a douche the customer was after he leaves. And this is such a small thing to make a scene over. It's very possible that the item was left there unintentionally for any number of reasons. Maybe an employee was checking a price for someone or looking up some bit of info on the item to answer a question, maybe it was a return that was set there to be reshelved during downtime, maybe a customer called and said they were on their way to come purchase it and it was pulled from the shelf, maybe it was misplaced in a different department and another employee brought it over but didn't know where it went. I'm not saying employees never stash things, or that it is right or wrong when they do, but if they were trying to hide it they probably wouldn't leave it in plain sight. If you had asked to purchase it or paid for it online and the order was canceled AND you could prove that it was willfully withheld then maybe you'd have cause to complain, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
