The Weekend From Hell, or The Worst. Move. Ever.

Well, the move happened. Eventually. Turns out we hired the worst moving company in the city. Who knew.

Buckle up, it's going to be quite a ride.

First of all, because of a family emergency out of town, the move had to be pushed back from September 13/14 to September 27/28. No problem, as we both still had our old places until the end of the month. Dar called the moving company and made all the arrangements, and was told that two guys in a big truck would arrive at her place on Saturday morning at 8:00am. Sounded good to me.

The plan was for them to pack the remainder of her kitchen stuff, load the truck with her stuff and then come to my place. They would then load my stuff, proceed to the new apartment and unload everything into the new place. Done and done. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

That's not exactly how it happened.

Naturally, when moving out of a high-rise apartment building (as Dar was doing), arrangements have to be made to reserve an elevator so that your stuff can be loaded out as quickly as possible. Of course, being the end of the month, there were others moving out on the same day who had also reserved an elevator and consequently, the elevator was booked solid.

They didn't show up at 8.

At about 8:45am, I was still at my place frantically throwing the last of my stuff into garbage bags and anticipating the arrival of the truck for about 10am. I got a call from Dar to tell me that they hadn't arrived yet, and that she had called the moving company to investigate. Apparently, the boss had no idea where they were, but assured her that they would be there soon. Uh huh.

Dar had reserved the elevators for 8:00am - 10:00am, and the window was rapidly closing. Another phone call at about 9:30 reveals that the boss still doesn't know where the guys are, but assures us they'll be there soon. Are you sensing a theme here?

They didn't show up at 10.

The elevator reservation time has now passed, and Dar is on the phone to the super, trying to make alternate arragements about the elevator. Turns out, the people who have reserved the elevator from 10:00am - noon had their truck arrive early, so they were done already. As long as our guys arrived fairly soon, it would still be OK.

They didn't show up at 11, and this is the point where the day started seriously to go downhill.

In addition to getting stuff ready for the moving truck, I had been loading my car with things that I didn't trust them to move. Things like my bass and my electric piano, the remainder of my hockey card collection that hadn't already gone to my brother's place for safekeeping. Y'know, stuff like that. To do this, I had to pull the car up in front of the house and park it with the four-way flashers on while I loaded it. Somewhere around 11:30am, I come outside with an armload of stuff to find the neighbours across the street standing beside their car and staring at mine.

I was greeted with, "Is that your car? I've just run into it, and we need to exchange information."

Crap.

I walked around to the other side of the car, and sure enough, she'd backed the SUV out of her driveway, failed to see my car, dented the hell out of the front passenger-side door and broken the side mirror. The only damage to the SUV was a broken tail-light.

If this is starting to sound like a rant, I apologize, but there's still more. Oh yes. Please bear with me.

So, fine, we exchanged information, I used some packing tape to re-affix the side mirror, finished packing the car and drove to Dar's to see what the hell was going on there.

I arrived at her building at about 12:30, and on my way in I meet her with the movers (let's call them Lenny and Squiggy) in tow, who had only just arrived themselves. Their excuse for showing up four and a half hours late? "We couldn't find the place."

Right. In this day and age is this still a viable excuse? I don't think so.

Anyway, the entire day's schedule was now completely out the window. The move that we thought was going to be over and done with by 4pm, is just getting started at 1pm.

But wait, there's more.

As the guys were finishing loading Dar's stuff into the truck, we're told that there's not enough room for all of my stuff, and that we're going to have to stop at the new place and offload some of it BEFORE going to my place. When asked why, they responded, "We didn't expect so much stuff, and we packed the truck wrong." Lenny and Squiggy had now become Lloyd and Harry.

What could we do? We went to the new place and dropped some stuff off. We had to sweet-talk the super at the new place, because we'd now missed our window there as well. AND, we had to tell him that we'd be making another trip in a few hours. He wasn't pleased, but said no problem.

So, instead of unloading everything from the truck like a normal person, they unloaded what they figured was just enough stuff to make room for my stuff. Turns out, they along with us were watching the day slide slowly south, and didn't want to lose the little leverage they had against us finally losing it and refusing to pay. This wasn't going to happen, but they didn't know that.

So it's now getting on for 6pm, and we're at my place loading my stuff. We'd already missed the technician who was supposed to set up our phone/cable/internet at the new place, and we're really starting to get pissed now. About halfway through the load-out, we're told that again, there's not enough room in the truck for all of my stuff and we're going to have to come back for the rest of it.

Idiots.

Now Dar's on the phone to the company demanding a refund or discount or something, because of course we're paying these guys by the hour, and this will mean three extra trips that we shouldn't have had to make. The boss is now seriously cheesed with Lloyd and Harry and tells us that he's willing to work something out.

The night dragged on, and included such highlights as a yelling match between our guys and some other people who were also moving in to our building, and who we apologized to afterwards. On top of that, as 10pm rolled around, Lloyd actually had the balls to start whining about how late it was getting, and that they had a one-hour drive ahead of them after they were done.

By 11:30pm, we just wanted them out of our place. They finished shortly afterwards, and the deal we worked out with their boss had us paying for 7.5 hours on a twelve hour move. It was the only bright spot in the day.