I've been with my current employer for about 16 months now. In previous entries, I've related my frustration with them and how quickly they threw me up the corporate ladder. To briefly review; I was hired as an assistant manager for a problem store, two months after that I was promoted to retail manager without my knowledge or input or any discussion and a month after that I was acting general manager until around April when it was finally made official after a salary battle which I 40% won and 60% lost. I got the minimum amount I'd do the job for, but nothing more and no retroactive pay. And the minimum amount I asked for would have been fine if other people in my store, with jobs below mine, weren't making more than me.

The store I am in was not my first choice. The mall we're located in is not a good one, our demographic isn't the greatest. It's extremely hard to get good employees and keep them, no one wants to work in this mall. It's taken me about a year but I finally managed to get rid of all the employees who sucked and recruited some new ones who don't. I finally have a management staff I like and trust, I'm comfortable there and the store is finally in a place where good things can happen.

So, of course, higher ups have decided it's time to move things around.

Three other general managers quit. Two of them had stores in the Baltimore area, where I now live. The call went out that anyone wanting to interview to take over one of the vacancies should contact our regional manager. I thought about it very briefly but in the end decided not to put my name in, because of the two Baltimore slots, one is a lower volume store than mine, which they wouldn't move me into, and the other was a higher volume store with a specialty machine that very few stores have and I definitely didn't feel they'd put me in there because of my lack of experience. Plus, i knew it would be easier to find someone for the Baltimore store than for my store, so moving me out so they could face the problem of filling my store wasn't going to happen.

But then they called me and asked me to interview for it. My "mentor", the general manager who recruited and hired me and has been a big help to me, told them I live in Baltimore now and they wanted to interview me for the higher volume Baltimore store. Of course I agreed to be interviewed and told them I'd be interested in considering it. And they told me that they were interviewing other people for it also, the implication being, I was in the running but it wasn't a done deal. Which was fine, since I wasn't even sure I wanted to switch stores.`

I was supposed to interview by phone yesterday. That never happened. Instead what happened was that my mentor called me and told me that our regional was unable to interview me but that it didn't matter because they were going to transfer me to the higher volume store. Needless to say, I was pretty dumbfounded. I went from possibly being offered the store to definitely moving there, whether I wanted to or not. And I'm very conflicted about it.

The pros of moving to the Baltimore store are these:
1. Closer to home. It'll shave a good 30-40 miles round trip off my commute.
2. Higher volume store, which means I'd get more payroll hours. It also means commissions would be better and I might see monthly bonuses more often, so...more money.
3. As if the whole situation weren't crazy enough, my store is about to lose its lab manager. If I stay, I'll have to find a new one. An excruciating process. If I go...the Baltimore store has a fully functional, very good lab team in place.
4. Professionally, it's a step up for me.

There is really only one con to switching stores. I'd have to leave the staff I painstakingly put together and learn a whole new one. I like my staff. I trust them, I have fun with them, we work well together. Going to another store would be like...switching high schools in senior year. I do not deal well with change.

I know I'll probably end up switching to the other store. I'd almost be stupid not to. But a big part of me wants to turn this down. Yes, professionally, it's a step up but here's a secret about me. I'm not ambitious. I don't really care. Frankly, I'd like to leave this company altogether and will the moment a better offer comes along. I don't give a crap about the corporate ladder and I'm moving up it almost in spite of myself.