Movers Movers Movers

This entire move thing put my blood pressure through the effing roof. I have two other big moves to compare it to and this one comes up short. Way short.

When we moved from Winnipeg to Waterloo, we did that move almost entirely on our own. We packed (and when I say we, I really mean ME because Craig was already out working but my parents and sister were a ton of help), we hired some local movers to load our big ass UHAUL (the biggest truck available), then we drove it out and hired local movers on the other end to unload it, we unpacked and put away. Nothing went wrong with the move.

When we moved from Waterloo to Brandon we had a moving company pack, load, transport and unload. It was a “smooth move”. Very clean. Craig flew out to Waterloo to supervise the pack and load and he was so impressed. It took two ladies about a ½ a day to pack our house and the load went just as well. When Craig did the final walk through you would never have known that we ever lived there. Later that day he flew back.

Clean.

Fast forward to our most recent move. Brandon to Landmark. I had a bad feeling about the packers when they were 2.5 hours late. They were scheduled to arrive at 9:00 a.m. and when 10:00 a.m. came and went with no sign of packers, I did some investigation. I was told that they were running behind and would be at my home at 11:30 a.m. I could not figure out why exactly they were running behind. I was their first job of the day. When the first two packers finally showed up they sat in the truck, parked in front of my house, and had a cigarette. I waited. Standing in the window with Piper on my hip, I waited some more.

It did not take them long to realize that they were not going to finish that day (and in time for the load the next morning) so they called in reinforcements and by then end of the day there were 10 packers in total packing up our stuff. They were there until 5:45. Even though we knew there would be some things that they could not pack… you know the flammable shit. I did not realize how shitty of a job they had done until I did the walk through of the house on Tuesday with the loading crew. They had neglected to look in every closet and complete the back. On top of that and the clincher of my entire experience with this effing local moving company was when they told me that they could not take down Piper’s crib nor could they set it up on the other end. Liability or some shit like that. We can understand and we are not total assholes BUT, had we known that… oh I don’t know say three effing weeks earlier when they came to do the estimate, or even the day before when the packers were there… we would have taken the effing crib down so it could be moved!

Then when the truck showed up to load all of our stuff I, once again, stood in the window and said to Piper, “Our stuff is not going to fit on that truck.” And it didn’t.

They had to call another truck to load the rest.

Needless to say, we had to make a trip back to Brandon to pick up that stuff and, oh yeah, clean up the mess they made. I AM NOT IMPRESSED! Could you effing imagine the scene if we were not just a three hour drive away. If we were a flight away, like the Waterloo/Brandon move? There would be no option of driving back to pick up anything, especially something as big as Piper’s crib.

The unload, on the other hand, went very well. I was very optimistic when the two trucks pulled up one right after the other at 9:00 a.m. sharp. They were right on time making for a great start to our day. It was the same crew that loaded our stuff (sans a few half wits) and they were quite enjoyable.

The unpack went just as well. A husband/wife team unpacked almost everything (Craig and I unpacked the kitchen the evening before in a desperate attempt to find the coffee maker for the morning. That is thing about moving to a small town, there is no Timmy’s in my back yard for a quick morning stop). Then they really made my day when they were unpacking Piper’s room and asked about the crib and when I told them the story they were flabbergasted. In the business for 40 years and had never ever heard such a thing. They take down and put up cribs ALL THE TIME!!!

Aside from all of that drama, our life is settling nicely here in Pleasant-Ville. Seriously. I stand at one of my two front doors and there are play structures in back yards as far as the eye can see. We are so close to the city yet we are so very far away. It is nice. This is truly a town where you wake up in the morning, open the door and tell the kids to get outside and don’t come home before noon. And you don’t worry about where they are and what they are doing.

I think we will really like it here.