Last time we moved, we vowed we weren’t doing it that way again. We rented a U-Haul, asked some friends for help, loaded all of our belongings into a truck, drove them to our next place, and unloaded all of our stuff. “Next time,” we said, “next time we’re hiring movers.”
And this time, we did. We found a service called Bellhop, they had good rates. We booked our move for Friday the 23rd of July. We closed on our new house two weeks before, and we needed to be out of our rental by the 31st. That would give us a week to make sure we left the property in the same condition we found it in.
By the time the movers got there at 2:00pm on Friday, I had already emptied the basement into two separate storage units by transporting boxes in my car. I packed up the library, thousands of books, and moved all of those over to the new place myself. We packed up all our DVDs and Blu-rays, and moved all of them into storage along with the shelving we used to display them. We’d packed up most of the kitchen (the counter-tops were still full of stuff from the cabinets we emptied, we figured we had a week to pack and move the stragglers) and moved the boxes to the front room. We packed up the bedroom and the nursery, and moved most of those boxes to the front room. We left some boxes stacked in the nursery.
We bought a new couch for the new house and were getting rid of the old one. So we told them we didn’t need the couch moved. We had some loose items that hadn’t made it into boxes on the couch, which also, was not their concern. We showed them the front room, said we needed those boxes, the curio cabinet, computer desk, leave the couch, the desk we used as a TV stand, the TV (surround sound, 4k player, cable box had already been packed and moved), from the kitchen, just the small table, microwave, washer and dryer. No need to move the refrigerator, or the stove, they belonged in the house. Upstairs, we needed two beds, the crib, chest of drawers, computer desk, TV, a nightstand, an etagere, and two small filing cabinets moved.
By this time, a full three quarters of our belongings had already been moved into storage or into the new house. The movers were supposed to come with the expectation that they were moving a two story, two bedroom house into a three bedroom two story house. After they stepped outside and conferred amongst themselves, they came back in and said they were going to need to re-schedule the move … — Scuse, please? You don’t re-schedule a fucking move. Moving day is moving day, come hell or high water. Period. Full stop. End of story.
Upon questioning, they said it was to give us more time to prepare for the move … — Scuse, please? For two months we’ve been spending our evenings and weekends packing and moving the majority of our belongings out of this fucking house while working full time jobs and raising a child. My entire library is already moved, all of the end tables, my massive mixed media collection … two storage units, a 10×10 and a 5×10, and a good portion of my new house was already full of my stuff that I already moved there prior to moving day. What the fuck do you want me to do, take apart all the furniture? That’s kind of the point of hiring movers. I don’t want to mess with that. I don’t want to do it so much, that I’m willing to pay someone else to do it. That’s the whole point of hiring the work out.
Anyway, they left and after we picked our jaws up off the floor at the sheer fucking audacity of what had just happened, we re-grouped and scrambled to find a U-Haul truck available at 2:00 pm on a Friday afternoon in late July. Luckily, we found a twenty-six foot truck available. I reserved it, we went and picked it up. It was jacked up. The brake light kept coming on and beeping at me. The brakes seemed fine, and if I turned the truck off and back on again, it stopped until it decided to start up with the beeping again.
I got the truck home at 4:30 pm, and we immediately started loading it as fast as we could. The goal was to get as much as we possibly could into the truck, loading our bed and Rowan’s crib last, so we could get the truck to our new house, and unload the crib and bed, get them set up by a fairly reasonable time, go to sleep, and save the rest of the unloading for morning. We stopped loading and headed to our new home around 9:00 pm. We were tired, sweaty, dirty, we hurt all over. And to think — the plan had been to sit back and point at things while we watched fit, muscular men move all our stuff for us. We’d paid good money for it, after all.
I think we got to sleep around 3:00 am the next morning. Nothing went quite as planned. When we got back home with the U-Haul, we realized we didn’t have any of Rowan’s food, nor her milk, nor any food for us, and we didn’t have Sammy’s dog food. So, I left Jay to fight with getting Rowan’s crib re-assembled on his own while I ran to Kroger and obtained sustenance for my family.
In the morning, I tried to secure the truck for another day. It was already booked. Every 26 foot truck in a 30 mile radius was booked. I tried to get a smaller truck, any truck, for the rest of our stuff. I kept calling all of the U-Haul locations near me. Nobody had a truck. Finally, I called the national number, and they did find a 20 foot truck. So, while Jay dropped Rowan off at his friend Linda’s house, I unloaded what I could of the U-Haul. When Jay got back, we unloaded the two-man objects. We went to the U-Haul, swapped out the trucks, and drove back to our old house for round two.
Jay headed back in the car to go pick up Rowan at around 7:00 pm. I kept loading until around 8:30, then drove the second truckload of furniture and boxes back to our new home. We had no plans to unload that night. We would unload in the morning, return the truck, and bring two more carloads home that evening, my Versa and his Optima. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week, I drove the Versa over to the old place after work and brought home a carload. Thursday, we took both cars, we made two trips with the Versa and one with the Optima. Friday, we brought both cars again, loaded them up, and finally got everything out of the old place that we meant to take.
Saturday, July 31st, eight days after some jackasses with no work ethic told us we needed to reschedule our move, I drove to the rental office and dropped off our keys.
I think that in many ways, in some states, when executed properly, the gig economy can be a good thing. In states that have adopted the Affordable Care Act, where self-employed individuals can find affordable health care options, and sensible tax codes. I think it has the potential to be good for workers, employers, and consumers alike. I rely quite heavily on services like Instacart, Shipt, Doordash, and Amazon, all of whom employ gig workers to make deliveries, do the shopping, etc. Most of the time they do a phenomenal job. And when they don’t, it’s usually because the person you lucked into getting is fairly new, in over their heads, not cut out for the job, and likely won’t last long before they seek out something more suitable for them.
But a moving company is not suited for gig workers at all. Moving a person’s belongings with the care and respect they deserve is a learned skill that most people don’t possess. Let’s face it, Americans love their things. Their shiny baubles. Their found treasures. I was already nervous that the movers might just be careless and break things without a thought. I was nervous that they wouldn’t show at all. I didn’t imagine they’d show up and then go, “Meh, too hard.”
We wanted professional movers, and they sent us college kids with no work ethic, no sense of obligation to honor an agreement, and absolutely no clue what goes into moving all of ones belongings from one house to another. Every time I think back, I think up fresh, new ways I should have berated them as they beat a hasty retreat from my rented property.
Next time we move, I swear, we’re hiring professional movers.