<p>MoWC’s thread brought back memories of our move 20 years ago, so I thought I’d relate that story in a separate thread rather than hijack hers. (By the way, congrats to wildchild on the toga win. My daughter spoke about competing, but just wound up throwing something together last minute). </p>
<p>When we decided to move from NJ to Florida, my wife said she could probably get a job offer with a corporate relocation to pay for the move. Since I was planning to start a new business, I was somewhat flexible and agreed to wait. The job market in her field was very hot at the time (before outsourcing), so she got an offer in no time. Her company hooked us up with a national moving company. </p>
<p>The movers are supposed to arrive at 8AM. They finally arrive at noon and there are only two guys: one burly guy and his scrawny helper. They get to work. The big guy is loading all of the heavy stuff while the other guy is taking one couch cushion at a time. After a few hours of this, the smaller guy asks to speak to me. He says the other guy is refusing to pay him. He wants me to do something about it since he “just got out of prison and doesn’t want to have to mess up my stuff”. He suggests calling the police which I readily agree to. The police come, meet with each of them and take the ex-con to the train station. Evidently the way this company works is the mover owns the truck and hires his own help. He had picked this guy up at a day labor place that morning and I assume pickings were slim that day.</p>
<p>So now we’re left with one mover. He starts hustling the stuff down and seems to be just throwing it in the truck. My wife and I had reservations at a nice restaurant in town and a hotel for the evening. We were all grungy and sweated up, but decide to go to dinner anyway. We come back to the apartment about 10PM and the guy is finishing up the last few items. We stay in the hotel and return the next day to shut things down before the long drive in my car.</p>
<p>When we met the mover in Florida, he rolls my wife’s car out of the truck and there are dents on the hood from where stuff was stacked on top. Of course, many other items were also damaged. We wound up getting several thousand dollars from the mover’s insurance. My wife drove that car for a few years afterward and people always asked how the hood got dented from the top.</p>
<p>From then on, we always used local movers and carefully checked references.</p>
<p>That is hilarious! My movers are now my best friends, since I have spent more time with them today than I have with H since my job in Nashville started 8 weeks ago!<br>
My company (employer) is on its third relocation company. I asked one of my co-workers why that was and he said, “Because senior management had to go through the same **** that you are going through.”
Ain’t it fun.</p>
<p>My moving story, 25 years ago. The big Mayflower van is in front of the house and the movers are loading our stuff for hours. I am running around kind of crazy and hot and tired and exhausted and I comment to the van driver how stressed I am. He says, “Yeah, moving really sucks!” which just totally cracked me up. I guess you had to be there! :)</p>
<p>My back went out on our last move three years ago. When the movers arrived at the new house my back got so bad I was prone on the floor and had to direct them where the furniture/boxes went from that position.</p>
<p>That’s a sore subject. When we moved again, I thought I would go exclusively to compact disc and sold my whole record collection. I later came to my senses, bought a new high end turntable and re-bought just about all of the titles I sold…and then some.</p>
<p>From almost 19 years ago…When I was expecting my first we bought a house from a lovely couple who assured us that they would be moving into their new construction home in plenty of time for us to get in well ahead of my due date. Well, of course the construction of their house kept getting delayed and the date kept getting pushed further and further back, until we realized that it wasn’t going to happen until AFTER the baby was born. All well and good until I started to go into full fledged “nesting” mode despite the temporary nature of our residence. First on my list was the refrigerator, an antique model that periodically developed an iceberg the size of the one that sunk the Titanic and took up most of the top shelf. Rather than do the intelligent thing, which I believe would have involved unplugging and a hair dryer, I took an icepick and started chipping away (rather successfully at first) until WHOOSH, with a big pop and explosion I made a direct hit on the coil, effectively putting the poor appliance out of its misery. We ended up having to pay the landlords for a whole new refrigerator which we made use of for all of a few short weeks while we still lived there! </p>
<p>All these years later, I still haven’t lived that one down!</p>
<p>We’ve had relatively good moving experiences with 2 relocations, but the first time was memorable because, as usual, I was in charge and DH was at work in the new city while the pack-up was happening, as well as when they moved us into the new house. So…there I am, alone with a 2 year old and a 5 month old, and we have no friends or relatives in the new city… Everything was going really well until our 5 month old (S1) got hungry. I had been nursing, but I had given him some bottles in the weeks leading up to the move in anticipation of the need to give him one on moving day! Needless to say, he absolutely refused to take a bottle while the movers were there. So I nursed him in his room, and the movers would shout out “Where does the … go, ma’am?” with each thing they brought in, til S1 had finished!! The next move I made DH hang around on moving day!!</p>
<p>I moved to Texas with a corporate re-location. When it was time to move from the hotel to the apartment it would have been late July…in Texas…second story apartment. I have never seen a guy the color of red that one of the movers was. I was terrified that he was going to die on the scene but he survived. I had two pieces of unfinished furniture that I planned to finish in the coming weeks. The guy’s sweat stains always showed, even after the furniture was stained.</p>
<p>Our moving story was way back in '86. We had our good guaranteed for delivery on a certain date so, naturally, we had the rent for the apartment set to coincide with then. Long story short, our stuff didn’t arrive until two weeks later (being moved from Seattle to LA.) Needless to say, we were not happy campers nor was the apartment very habitable for the duration. We asked the company to partially compensate us, and got the troubleshooter of the newspaper in Seattle to write something up on it. Miracle of miracles, the moving company agreed to comp us for one of the two weeks, a reasonable end to a painful (back) time.</p>
<p>Our moving story, to our first house from apartment 1 mile away, with a rented truck and the sweat equity of friends. We have 2 small china cabinets with glass walls and doors. I’m inside and hear crash, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. A friend blocks my exit and tells me I don’t want to see this. As a nurse, I’m concerned for major lacerations.</p>
<p>What I finally get to see is the broken water cooler glass container and the tinkling was all the accumulated change falling. No injuries.</p>