Sorry, I didn't mean to freak you out, but from personal experience I learned that it the mechanic missed something that obvious, he most likely didn't pay attention to the technical manual, or he was having a bad day. Either way it was a bad thing for you. Luckily for you everything worked out, and hopefully the mechanic learned a lesson in the process. BTW, it is normal for Crossfire transmissions to shift hard when they are cold. There is a blurb in the owner's manual about that. My car is a relatively early production model ('04 s/n 1088) and my tranny is an absolute pain to get into reverse when its cold. The 1-2 shift is not much better. Once it warms up a bit it shifts very nicely. That's a trade off I can live with.
I have owned German-made (mostly two wheeled) machinery for quite a long time and I have found that each machine has it's own "personality"... BMW K-bike owners literally have to split their machines in half once every year or so to perform the dreaded input spline lube, but these same owners have had their bikes for well over 100K miles because they're sooo much fun to ride.