Moving

I hired movers to move. I have a bad back, no friends either able-bodied or disable-bodied and way too much furniture for someone living in a 2 bedroom apartment. The moving company says it will cost about 112 dollars an hour with a minimum of 4 hours for a 3 man crew. Alright, I says, and what is this flat travel rate business? Oh that, they say, we attach an additional flat hour's rate for travel time. Wokay, says I, come, move.

Now these three guys comprised of the following three guys : One large hardworking guy, one equally large guy but less hardworking who not only happened to be prone to gastro-intestinal attacks that resulted in him spending about an hour in my bathroom but was also in his free time, hopelessly addicted to cellphone use. So you would ask, wokay, but did the third guy not make up for the lack of performance of the second guy, come on, did he not? and I would reply, yes, maybe in a perfect world that would have been the case. Maybe in a world where more than half of America wouldn't have voted for George W. Bush, sure, why not. But not in this world. In this world, the third guy would be an old guy barely able to get up and walk about without assistance. Yes, that would be the third guy in this world.

So to recap, I am paying 112 bucks an hour for three guys where at any given point of time only one guy is working while the second guy is either resting in my restroom or speaking on the cellphone and the third guy is resting in the truck. My calculations had gone the following way : 112 * 4 hours + 112 for travel time = $560. And as much as it pained me to give anyone $560 of my money for using my restroom, it had to be done.

It turns out that we own a lot of crap. I mean, material possessions were appearing out of thin air. Closets turned out to contain blankets which were covering pillows which were hiding lamps sitting on top of suitcases containing rocks. Blankets, pillows and lamps were all stuffed into garbage bags and loaded in the truck. It took 3 hours just to load the truck. And then we were off to the new home.

It took the movers two hours to cover the distance a one-legged walrus with a pebble in his shoe would have covered in an hour at the most. I don't know, maybe they stopped for a burger, took a nap, caught a Broadway play, read Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" cover to cover, who the hell knows. But I didn't really care because of the flat hourly travel rate.

So when they showed up at my home to unpack, I was of a mild temperament. I even helped them unpack. I laughed at their jokes and when the dresser fell on their feet. The air was full of positive energy. As a result, it took them only two hours to unload the truck. Okay, so it would be six hours of moving = 6 * 112 = 672. Well, nope. Turned out that the flat rate thing which I should have checked out more thoroughly, was just the flat rate for the travel of the empty truck and did not include the two fucking hours spent in traveling from the old apartment to the new home. So that added about 2 hours more to the moving time. Plus the tip. So in all, it cost us a thousand dollars, or what the kids like to call it nowadays, "a cool grand" to move. That got me to thinking, man, I really got to get me some more able-bodied friends.

So anyways, I still have to move some leftover crap. We'll move that this weekend. Bye Bye Exton, PA, you were a good host for the past three years. Especially you, you, you and you. And you. And although you did try to kill me numerous times through your ridiculously blazing hot Schezuan pepper-laced food, goddamn, I would have died with a smile on my tortured lips. Hopefully we will meet again on the battlefield sans any hard feelings. Only stomach ulcers.