Moving on (Pt. 11)

SAN JOSE, Calif. My move-in expectations were low & Whining Joe managed to meet them.

Although, upon learning in Seattle that my apartment has two levels, he’d whined that he’d “have to hire an extra guy”, he showed up here yesterday at 0845 with only two unloaders. When I asked what happened to the “extra guy”, he said he hadn’t realized there were two levels. I reminded him of our conversation—that I’d told him it was a townhouse & he’d mentioned needing another person—he shifted his eyes & mumbled, “I forgot.”

Yeah, right.

No doubt the number of men on the team comes out of his profit, so he was just trying to save some money.

Well—kinda. He now has to drive 1100 miles to Albuquerque in two days.

They crushed one of my bookcases—not one of the Ikea ones; one of the Jerry Piller’s cases. Plus crushed one of the plastic bin frames & punched a hole in an Ikea case. They told me about the first; said nothing about the others. I wrote them on the bingo sheet. But now I have to throttle a claim out of the company

It took them until nearly 1700 to finish the delivery; exhausting for me because you have to be available with that damned bingo sheet to check in every tag. Which was problematic as there are at least 16 cartons that weren’t tagged. Meaning that either the packers or the loaders/driver didn’t bother to put tags & inventory them.

& now I’m wondering if, for some reason, the cartons with my bedside lamp & all my computer software CDs & peripheral drives were also not inventoried & are on their way to Albuquerque with Whining Joe. Because they are not in my house.

I’m going to have to go through all the cartons in my storage unit to see if they’re in a mismarked (i.e., marked for storage instead of not) carton. Along with the cooking pots & spice rack I’d designated to be here & not in storage.

I’m definitely not whelmed by this whole crowd. The packers were extremely stingy with the packing paper—one sheet per item, whether it was a box of SOS pads or a framed picture or Waterford crystal stemware. They didn’t even bother to wrap a lot of stuff, including the bowl (with lid) of salt; so the latter just came open in transit.

So it’s going to take me a lot longer to get settled than I’d have judged by having an allegedly professional moving company.