Money Talks, Bullshit Walks Part 2

So as I was saying, I was working in the Garden department at the multi-national home improvement retail chain. The Summer selling season was coming to a close (this is in the middle of June) and all the staff that was brought into Garden needed to move to other departments in the store due to the drop in work load. Rumors started to circulate regarding which people were going to what department. My department head mentioned that it was pretty certain that I would be going to Hardware. It wasn't my first choice but I could live with it. Besides, I was still looking for a different job.
One of the other people that was hired at the same time as me to work in Garden had been approached by the Human Resources Manager to see if they would like to work in the Kitchens Department as a kitchen designer. This person said yes and was approached again about three weeks later by the Human Resources Manager and was told that the Store Manager just needed to "sign off" on the department switch. All the extra workers in the Garden department were told on a Thursday that we would switch to our new departments on the coming Monday. On Saturday I was approached by the person that does the scheduling for the store and sets up the training. They asked if I had been told that I was going to the Kitchen department. I replied that I had not. They then went on to tell me that starting Monday, which was in 2 days, I would be in training for the next month for kitchen design, at a store 65 miles away.
Holy Crap! Talk about being blind-sided. So I had to scramble to set up day care arrangements for my son, which to be fair was rather easy but there was no way the store management could have known that. I kind of got the feeling that I was being taken for granted but I swallowed whatever annoyance I had because I was going from a Standard department to a Specialty department. Specialty departments are areas of the store that handle complex products or services, such as kitchen design, flooring, or doors and windows. From what I could tell there was to be a pay increase when you switch to a Specialty department. This was the rumor that I picked up from the other workers in Standard departments. The potential of a pay increase eased any tension I felt about the short notice for my impending training that would add a 3 hour commute to my work day.
The other person that was told that they were going to Kitchens of course wasn't very happy about the whole situation. Before the Human Resources Manager could get the Store Manager to "sign off" on the department switch the Human Resources Manager got themselves fired. It was quite a fiasco and a story that I may share later. As it turns out the only reason I got the job in Kitchens was because of the way that I handled customers, which is to say that my customer service was A #1 Top-Notch.
More to come...