It began like this....

I work for a Home Depot location in Southeastern Ohio. I've been there for a little more than two years. In the beginning, I loved my job, I thought being a cashier was awesome.... then the changes started coming. Our Store Manager (SM) resigned because she did not agree with the "changes in policy". This didn't mean a lot to me at the time, because I was new to the job. Then our new SM came in.
At first, no one knew what to make of him. He was new to the district, new to the state, and from what the information mill told us, he had aspirations to higher things than a SM. He was strict, and to a point, he seemed fair. A few months later, a bit of drama occurred, and one of the garden managers was fired, which meant the managers themselves had to be shifted around. The unlucky department to lose their Department Head (DH) was my department, D90. She went to manage Electrical, whose manager became the new garden DH. D90 went without a DH for a few months while they tried to find somebody to accept the Front End Supervisor position.
Eventually, they got a woman who had been an IMA (one of the people who change the price tags on the shelf to reflect the actual prices) to fill the post. She, like our new SM, seemed to be fair, and the Front End gave her the benefit of the doubt, and a fair shot at leading one of the store's most difficult departments.
Everything ran smoothly for the next few months. I had a seasonal second job that I was looking forward to, and I continuously checked in with the FES about it, because I wanted to be sure that I could get the days off I needed to work. During this point in time, complaints were starting to filter in from other cashiers about our FES. Favoritism was becoming an issue, she was ignoring cashiers who needed their availability changed to accommodate school, or a second job, she was also ignoring variance paperwork concerning cashiers switching shifts with each other (more on that later). At this time, I still had no quarrel with her. I asked her one last time before I submitted my availability for the time my second job would be. The FES told me that it was fine, that I could tell my seasonal boss that I was able to work all the days we needed.
A few days after this, she came back to me, telling me that she "just couldn't" let me have the time off for the second job. I asked her why. She told me that it was the descision of the SM and our Operations Manager (Ops Manager), and not hers at all. So I went to talk to the SM.
He gave me some prepared speech about the "needs of the company", how they simply could not afford to give me the time that had been promised to me. I explained to him that I did not just do the seasonal job because I liked it, but because I used the money to go to school in the winter. The SM said he would see what they could do.
Let it be known that just before all of this happened, I had to leave work early to get to a doctor's appointment, and was not able to come back to work afterwards. This had upset the FES, because it meant she actually had to run on a cash register for two hours.
I waited for five days for my FES to tell me what had been discerned, and I had heard nothing, so I went back to the SM. He told me that he would talk to her, and that I would know by the end of my shift. Two days later, the FES gave me a piece of scrap paper listing off days I could and could not work my seasonal job, effectively cutting my time there in half. When I asked if I could offer the hours that conflicted to another cashier who needed them, I was told "No, I need you here working."
Fast forward from here to a month later. A problem involving two other cashiers had been brought to the front, and had broken the dam of complaints about our FES that had not been mentioned before. The district's HR manager came to the store and had a meeting with the cashiers. A week later, our FES was gone. She'd been fired for misconduct, and a laundry list of other things. And once again, my department was devoid of a manager.

-continued in next post-