Chicago to the Berkshires, Part 4: WTF Movers?!

Part 4.

Part Four?! Movers. Here’s the thing about movers.

…Why. Why are they like that.

(And oh my goodness, we’re SO CLOSE to the end of this saga! Related: Can you believe that I’m still blogging about this nonsense? You should see me in person. Theoretically, if we were able to have parties, I’d be real real fun at parties.)

So. To catch up: Our moving “specialists” were jerks with a phone call returnability record akin to my middle school boyfriend, our movers (who brought the wrong size truck) couldn’t promise that any of possessions which actually made it onto the dang truck would be there any time soon, our beautiful friends questioned our safety and sanity, and I’m a new devotee of the Red Roof Inn forever and ever Amen.

Let’s jump back in!

Turns out, most things are made a little bit better by a good night’s sleep. (Thanks, Mom!) Moods were lifted, gas tanks were replenished, and our bellies were filled, thanks to sanitized grab n’ go complimentary breakfast packs from the Red Roof Inn. (Oh my God, Red Roof Inn, I love you.) We made excellent time getting from Sandusky, OH- hometown of “Tommy Boy”- to Pittsfield, MA- hometown of meee!

And oh man, pulling onto the clover-filled country lane of our new home on a clear early evening, with the just the slightest hint of the most recent rainstorm…heavenly. Waiting to greet us in front of the new homestead were my masked-up mother and her- ahem– guy friend Jon, but do you want to know what my kids noticed first?

Oh, that would be the intensely hard-to-source surprise swing set and trampoline just beyond the (not surprising but still very wonderful) pool. The car had barely slowed before all three kids flung the doors open and, sparing an air kiss for my Mom and Jon, sprinted across the lawn and bellyflopped through the trampoline’s netting. (As P.J. and I unpacked the vans we could hear the distant sounds of Jasper proclaiming “This is the best day of my liiiiiiiiife.”)

Pals, it felt so good to be there. So right. And I could pretty much feel my Dad’s joy at the noise and chaos and, sure, cats that we began to unload into the house.

Even on air mattresses, it felt like home.

So when we got the call informing us that our stuff would arrive on Sunday- three days later!- we were thrilled. After all, the hard part was done! We had packed everything up! Moved ourselves across five states! Our days of crying were over!

So. The movers.

The day that the truck was due to arrive, it began to rain. Hard. (Concerned texts from friends read: “You peeps okay? We haven’t had rain like this in decades.”) We’re talking sideways, flooding, can’t-see-in-front-of-your-face rains. Hahahaha of course we were still okay! A professional team of four movers was going to move our carefully labeled and color-coded bins to the correctly labeled (and color-coded) rooms!

I even put a color tab on each door. I did! Because I believe(d) in The System.

I was fully prepared to lounge around with a cup of tea and occasionally point to where a table would go, maybe even unpack a box or two and put together a gallery wall. Who knows? Sky’s the limit on an easygoing day like this one!

Our first inkling that Sunday miiight get a little wonky was when we saw the two men who arrived at the end of our lane. Two. Not the promised four.

“Where’s the rest?” We asked, hoping the other two movers would pop out of the cargo hold or whimsically from behind a shrub or something like that.

“Yeah, they didn’t show. We’ll see how it goes.”

Okay! And we’re all cool with this! Ha HA! WE WILL SEE HOW IT GOES.

Then they tried to back the truck down the lane, something I assured them that my Mom and our new neighbors had assured me was a thing that always worked out, moving-wise. (“You sure?” “Well, there are five big ol’ houses jammed full of what I’m going to assume is big ol’ furniture, and nary a soul mentioned moving from homestead to homestead with a handcart.”)

They didn’t want to try.

I told them that, oh, they were gonna try.

One mover backed the truck fifty feet down the lane while his partner stood further away and shook his head. “Nope, nope, nope.”

After the ol’ two-minute try, they gave up. Moved the truck to a nearby parking lot. And demanded $1,500 for a shuttle van that they’d load and unload (and load and unload) in the pouring rain. I came back with a hard ‘no’ on that one, as our “contract” had mentioned the possibility of a shuttle charge if the truck wouldn’t fit down the street and only up to $1,000. They- contractually- didn’t know if the truck would fit down the street because they didn’t try and they- contractually- were being money-grubbing pirates. (Yes, let’s go with “pirates” for blog posterity.)

After a conversation with me that would’ve been bleeped out in its entirely by the FCC, P.J. talked them back down to 1k. He went with them to get the shuttle van. They asked him if, on his way back, P.J. could swing by and pick them up lunch at Subway. He did. (PHILIP.)

There was a lunch break.

Oh, and during this interlude the foreman told P.J. that the 1k needed to be in cash. Check? Cash. Venmo? Cash. Cool. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.

Except.

We had taken out our daily ATM limits for the movers themselves earlier that day. We didn’t yet have a local bank account set up, save for our mortgage. And we definitely couldn’t get our Chicago bank to lift the daily limit because…no one answered. Because it was a Sunday. A Sunday rapidly approaching evening.

So, feeling like an errant teenager, I called my Mom and asked if I could borrow some money. Only problem was, she had my kids at her place the next town over, and even if I ran over with a check, she’d have to go bank to bank while I stayed with the kids. Seemed inefficient, not to mention more than a little soul-crushing.

“Don’t head over yet. Let me see what I can do,” she told me over the phone.

Not half an hour later, Jon came driving down the lane. Now keep in mind, even though my Mom has been dating Jon since last Fall, I’d only met the guy in person twice by this point. But here he was, in the rain, after going to multiple banks of his own, to hand me a stack of cash. He smiled kindly.

“Your mother said you needed this.”

So, I think I did a pretty decent job of hiding it, but I definitely burst into tears with gratitude as I handed him a check. (“No rush,” he told me.)

Super chill person that I am, I informed him that, no matter what ever happened between my Mom and him, I’d choose him. (Sorry, Mom.) He laughed and told me that my mother promised to buy him ice cream later that day.

I still might name a tasteful room after him or something. Seriously. I decided to join my kids in their new habit of jokingly- and loudly- thanking Jon for everything, regardless of how minor, regardless of who actually performed the task. Someone vacuumed the upstairs hall? THANKS, JON!

We really like Jon.

Back to the move!

Newly fed, newly overpaid, the movers began the process of the actual move.

“We don’t do stairs,” the foreman told me.

“But it’s in the contrac-”

“I don’t care what’s in the contract, we don’t do do stairs unless we decide to, like that- there.” He pointed at a slate step from the driveway towards the house. “75 dollars. And that-” He pointed at the six-inch rise into the portico. “Another 75.”

I pointed, too. “THAT. IS. NOT. A. FLIGHT. OF. STAIRS.”

P.J. moved me inside- before I pointed with a different finger- and they came to the agreement that they’d carry all boxes into the sunroom and the living room, both right off of the portico. No stairs. No bedrooms. No attics.

(THAT. IS. NOT. AN. AGREEMENT.)

They unloaded the first shuttle, P.J. carried boxes up to the attic(!) and bedrooms(!), and I stewed- while also grabbing and hauling bins into the house. It continued to rain. After the second shuttle load took a really long time, I told P.J. that we were going to run out of daylight soon. This was a bad scene.

“Yep!” He cheerfully agreed as he hauled boxes up two flights of stairs. “A total sh*tshow!”

It rained harder. The movers started flinging boxes and furniture across wood floors, leaving scratches and lakes of muddy water in the living room. I tried to keep up with clean(er) and somewhat dry towels, but eventually gave up. There were no more dry, mud-less zones in all of the land.

By the third shuttle load, the second mover was done. He hauled Nora’s twin bed frame into the house and, at our pleading, agreed to carry it upstairs. (You know, like a MOVER.) Trudging through the dining room, he smacked the pendant lamp first with his head and then with the bed post.

It cracked.

And then my heart cracked, because that was the Tiffany lamp that my Mom and Dad had in their first home together, back before they could really afford nice things, and I had taken ownership of this home mere days prior, and already my Dad’s things were being trashed, and why was everything turning to trash like trash?!

I cried.

P.J. said he’d take care of it. He told the foreman, who then went to go talk to the other mover. Who was now nowhere to be found.

Eventually he was located in the front seat of the truck, on the phone with his girlfriend, and he would. Not. Come. Out.

He was tired.

He had to work early the next day.

He wished the other two guys had shown up. (ME TOO, PAL.)

While the foreman attempted to convince the other mover to open the door, P.J. and I hopped into the back of the truck and began unloading boxes. Because if this is now the Wild West, we’re taking our damn stuff.

Eventually the three of us- sans second mover- finished unloading the furniture and boxes. It was almost fully dark. The foreman turned to go.

“Wait,” P.J. said. “We were told you’d rebuild the tables and the beds.”

“Nope,” the foreman said.

P.J. walked halfway down the lane to work off steam and to call the moving brokers- I can’t even bear to type out an ironic “specialists” anymore- and managed to get someone on the emergency Moving Day hotline. P.J., whom it might be fun to remember has worked in the tech support/customer care field for roughly a gazillion years, got condescendingly tech-supported/customer-“cared.”

It did not go well.

He was informed that, sure, contractually the movers should rebuild the furniture. But if you look at the fine print– at which point I heard P.J.’s temper sizzle and snap in half- it can be interpreted as the movers are only responsible for rebuilding furniture that they themselves broke down.

“But it’s a cross-country move,” the mellow-to-a-fault P.J. yelled.

“Yes.”

“And do you ever have the same team load from the Midwest and unload on the East Coast?”

“No.”

“So the “same movers” argument…”

“It’s pretty rare.”

P.J. came back into the house and calmly let me know that one of our new neighbors heard him scream a word that looks a lot like “a******.”

The foreman, correctly reading the room which contained a guy unafraid to scandalize the neighborhood and a woman who, really, hadn’t stopped crying since 4pm that day, offered to “help” rebuild some furniture. He and P.J. pieced together the dining room table (“Do you have directions? I really don’t know where any of this goes”) and then the movers took off at 9pm.

…Leaving a house with the aforementioned broken stained glass pendant lamp, a shattered cocktail cabinet mirror, two smashed dining room table corners, a completely snapped off wooden post from a corner cabinet (actual quote: “Maybe just don’t show your wife…?”) a soggy and water-stained wedding dress “preservation” box, multiple dinged-up artwork frames covered in glass shards, boxes upended with little to no regard for color-coding systems on the first floor, wooden floor grooves in which you could sail a boat, and a swampy dog smell that paired super nicely with the muddy footpaths throughout the house. (Ever pay someone 13k to trash your whole house? What’s the opposite of “white glove treatment?” Probably something having to do with getting punched in the face with a dirty diaper.)

But- and here’s the most important part- BUT our kids were finally on their way back from my Mom’s place, and we had promised them beautiful beds to sleep in that night. So we got on our “yes, aren’t we LUCKY to be on this adventure” happy faces and laced up our “sure does look messy but won’t it be fun to put everything where it wants to LIVE” grownup shoes.

And even though kids are resilient…

And even though plans change…

…We needed to redeem this day, so P.J. and I built those M-Fing beds while they brushed their teeth.

After they excitedly fell asleep, P.J. and I stood in our new bedroom and looked at sopping wet boxes and our banged up bed frame. We had two choices, we told each other. We could either down some bourbon, unroll an air mattress, and pretend this day never happened…or we could down some bourbon, stay up until 1am, and build a king-sized bed.

And damned if we didn’t build our bed.

And damned if we didn’t cut out the middle man, call our credit card company, and put an immediate stop payment on all charges to the moving broker.

(What’s a “contract,” d***heads?”)

***

Thanks for reading this cray cray saga, friends! If, like me, you needed to occasionally stretch and take a deep breath and maybe even put your head between your knees, you can absolutely take solace in the fact that thing have been- dare I jinx it?!- super duper lovely since we’ve moved in.

We’ve fully aired out in the countryside. (Our stuff, too!) Martino Glass here in Pittsfield is a top-notch business. I’ve successfully pruned a hedgerow of rhododendrons. The kids even got library cards!

I look forward to regaling you all with boring, boring, boring updates incredibly soon.

Probably a lot of ice cream pix, too.

(Thanks, Jon!)

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