A Moving Experience

A friend of mine often jokes that I should have my own reality show, because so many weird things happen to me. After today, I’m starting to take the idea seriously. I had planned a lazy Sunday—my granddaughters spent the night with me, and we were going to sleep late then go out for breakfast. However, I was roused from my bed by the phone ringing at 9:00 a.m.

I don’t function well without coffee, particularly first thing in the morning--no matter how late the morning starts. Whenever Bunny brought me coffee in bed, that was a big hint that he had something planned for the day. Now, without the benefit of caffeine, all I could hear was frantic babbling.

“Movers…jacked up…hostage!” A friend of mine had bought a bunch of furniture at an auction in Clearwater, and now the movers who’d been hired were apparently changing the terms of the agreement. Could I go down there and see what was going on? Would Joey be interested in going with me to supervise the movers? Joey actually worked for a moving company for awhile, so he was the perfect person to come along. The movers were supposed to start at 10:00 a.m.

First I called Joey to gauge his interest. My friend would pay him a flat rate, and I estimated the job wouldn’t take more than two or three hours. I’ve moved several times, both internationally (from Germany to the U.S.) and interstate (Louisiana to Georgia to Florida), and several times intrastate, so I have some experience knowing how much stuff will fit into a moving truck. I had actually previewed the furniture for my friend on Friday afternoon, so I knew where it was and how much of it there was. Very dark cherry, Horse & Hound style—not my taste at all—but nice, heavy, quality pieces, all in good condition. Professional movers should have had no problem fitting it all into the truck in that amount of time, if not less. He was willing. We’d meet at Steak-N-Shake (yes, they serve breakfast), and Corey would take the kids and I would take Joey to Clearwater.

So I threw on some (very) casual clothes, applied a minimum of makeup, and dressed Sarita while Trinity got ready. We headed out for breakfast, JoCo joined us, and then Joey and I headed for Clearwater. If the movers were starting at 10:00 a.m., they should be well into the job by the time we got there. The furniture was actually at two locations. We went to the one where, logically, the movers should have been—the one with the biggest pieces of furniture. Naturally, the movers were at the other location. The guy in charge of our location called the guy in charge of the other place to see how far along the movers were.

“They’ve got about 30 minutes left.” There was no sense in going to the other location, since it was about 15 minutes away. There was a question of whether everything would fit into one truck. so we told them to bring everything over to the second place and we’d sort it all out there. We had inventoried the stuff that was to go onto the truck at our location when we first got there. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, a Penske truck pulled up, and Joey jumped up to meet the sole occupant. It wasn’t the truck we were waiting for; it was someone else who’d bought furniture.

After about another hour, as we were sitting in the lobby looking out on the parking lot, a well-worn, dirty white moving truck pulled up. The driver peered uncertainly at the building.

“It looks like the movers from Funny Farm!” Joey said. His unexpected reference to the Chevy Chase movie threw me into a fit of laughter. So dead-on, so funny, so perfect.

Eventually, the three-man crew made its way into the building to start taking apart the desks. I hate to judge books by their covers, and try very hard not to, but these guys made it very difficult. Two of them looked like they hadn’t seen soap and water in quite awhile. Or shampoo. The movers I’ve seen before had uniforms, not wife-beaters. On the plus side, the lack of sleeves did allow for viewing the full sleeves of tattoos. I’m an art lover, but “Never Trust Bitches” is probably an acquired taste.

They’d brought only the desks from the other location, which meant they’d left behind about half the stuff they were supposed to have on the truck. There was plenty of room on the truck, but their boss had told them to only move the desks.

“Then get him on the phone. You’re supposed to move everything.” I said. Since the unexpected mark-up, my friend had Googled the moving company, and let’s just say they don’t get stellar reviews. If there was still room on the truck after they loaded this location, they’d go back, he assured me. After he talked to his boss. Besides, there was another mover coming for that other stuff. I assured him he was mistaken—he was the only mover who’d been hired.

They weren’t the hardest working movers I’ve ever seen: it took them a little over two hours just to get nine desks loaded. The crew leader huffed and puffed and moaned and groaned like he was 80 years old, but he was actually younger than Joey. He also had difficulty keeping his crew on task—he had to occasionally go looking for them. At about desk number seven, he made it clear that the desks were all they were taking.

Another argument ensued, and I even got in the truck at one point to demonstrate how much room was left in the truck, and how the contract was for the whole truck. Joey made suggestions about how they could maximize the space they had, but they were adamant—the boss had told them that only the desks were being moved. The boss who now wasn’t answering the calls that the crew leader was allegedly making to him.

They closed up the truck and were “going for a snack” while they waited for the boss to call them back. Side note: we were on a corner lot, and there were two big convenience stores directly across the streets in either direction. Snacks were easily in walking distance. We suspected we’d seen the last of our reluctant movers.

Meanwhile, I was on the phone to my friend, who actually managed to get hold of the boss’s wife. I can only imagine that conversation, but I’m sure that at least some of it consisted of him disabusing her of any book-cover judging her crew leader had done of me and my sidekick. We weren’t just some haphazardly-dressed mother with a know-it-all son; we were an attorney (with photographs) and her hired gun moving expert.

While we were mid-dial at trying to find a moving truck of our own, the movers reappeared. They were less happy than they’d been the first time, but they were back. They loaded in more stuff and ignored more suggestions. At one point, Joey offered to climb into the truck and load chairs onto the top of the stack of desks. Instead, they piled chairs onto the lower sections of the furniture, declared the truck full, and left.

As they were peevishly loading the chairs in, yet another box truck pulled up, with another guy coming to pick up furniture. Joey was the first to notice his license plate—he was from Gwinnett County, Georgia. Joey greeted this new guy like he was an old friend. My sonny has the gift of gab—he’s the kind of person who truly never meets a stranger.

I could go on and on with the story, but to bring it quickly to a close, we talked the new guy into bringing all the left-over furniture to my house, where it’s safe in my garage instead of out on the streets of Clearwater. So, what started out to be an easy few hours turned into a long, drawn-out affair. On the plus side, I got to spend the day with Joey, trading barbs and laughs and working together to try to solve a series of problems.

“I enjoyed spending the day with you, even though it didn’t turn out like we thought,” I said as I drove him back to his house.

“Yeah, but it would’ve been a lot better doing something fun,” he answered.

We’ll do something fun another day. What matters most is that we got through this day as a team, and we enjoyed ourselves despite the circumstances.