Moving blues
Aug. 3rd, 2004 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqMy last job sucked a lot more than my current one.
Back in the dark ages, I used to earn my minimum wage as a warehouseman and part-time swamper for a furniture factory. The work was hard, the hours were long, the play was low, the customers (mostly) sucked and the boss was a cheap bastard. On the up side - well, in retrospect I don't think there was any up side to that job. If the job market had not been so tight at the time I would have quit and found another place to take abuse for pay, but my motto of the day was "food before pride".
Though I was usually stuck in the warehouse, I usually jumped at the chance when they needed a swamper because it got one outside for awhile, and brought with it the chance to earn some paltry tips on top of one's starvation wage. On the other side of the ledger, you got to deal face-to-face with customers. Most were okay, but there were more than a few wingnuts out there whose very existence was an indictment on the viability of humanity.
One day I got tapped to work as a swamper when one of the regulars called off sick. Normally I'd have rejoiced, but this was the day that they were delivering THE SECTIONAL. Everyone knew about this piece of furniture - it was a custom-order piece, done up in an early-80s plain design with squared arms (an important detail) and a white cotton finish. It was a 4 x 2 seater, and was heavy as it was large. What made this particular move special was that not only was the piece large, awkward and heavy, but it was being delivered to an apartment. Oh, and not just any apartment, but one of those mid-rise ones along the waterfront that were renown more for their view than for their spaciousness. Tenth floor. Of course the people took measurements before they bought this large piece, right? I mean, that makes sense doesn't it? It seems they did - sort of. They measured the dimensions of the room it was going into and had it custom built to exactly fit.
We got both parts of the sectional to the appropriate floor, and then the fun began. When D (the driver) rang the bell, Satan's 50-something sister answered the door, gave us a friendly sneer and said, "Oh, you're finally here. We want it in the music room." We moved the two-seat portion in first so that we could scout out the route before tackling the larger piece, and we discovered a minor problem. The entryway to the apartment was a narrow hall with an eightish-foot ceiling. About ten feet in, the hall one had the option of proceeding straight into the bedroom, or taking a ninety-degree left turn into another hall where the ceiling dropped about a foot. Why did the ceiling drop a foot? One might speculate that the designer disliked large furniture, or perhaps he was just a moron. In any event, that second hallway ended at the living room, with a small doorway midway (six feet) down it's length leading into a music room on the right.
When we went out to collect the four-seater, I said to the driver, "There's not a hope in Hell that this thing is going to go around the first corner, let alone into the music room." He agreed, but decided that it would be best to make a token effort to appease the customer. We spent about ten minutes trying to negotiate the first corner, figuring that would be enough to illustrate to her that it was not going to happen. Anyone who has moved furniture for a living has probably run into this though... she magically transformed from a rich, bitter, middle-aged bitch into the master of space and physics who can make anything possible.. I've never understood why a lay person will assume that they have more knowledge about moving furniture than the professionals, but everyone seems to be an expert. They know how to make it work. Everything will fit if you just twist it the right way. When we offered to give up she demanded that we try again. After ten more minutes of futility, D told her, "I'm sorry, but this just isn't going to fit around that corner. If it had tapered arms it might just get around the first corner, but with the lowered ceiling in the hall we still wouldn't be able to get it through that second doorway into the music room.
"Nonsense! We measured it. You simply don't know what you're doing! Just pick it up again and do what I tell you." She began to shrill out orders like a drill sergeant. "Lift that corner higher. Higher I say. Move it to the left. Move it to the right. Drop your corner. Twist it to the right. Twist it to the left. Higher! Lower! Higher! Twist it around again. Take it back outside and bring it back in upside down!"
(Insert another fifteen minutes of futility here.)
"Lift your end up some more!"
"Ma'am, it's pressed against the ceiling now."
"Then slide it more to the left!"
"It's against the wall."
"Then slide it to the right. I don't know why you are having so much trouble with this! Why couldn't they send somebody who knows what they are doing?"
Now that was exactly the wrong thing to say to D. Up until now he had been humouring her, but D had forgotten more than this lady would ever know about moving large, bulky objects into tight living quarters. He put down his end of the sectional, turned to her and said (paraphrased here to make it more family friendly), "Lady, this thing isn't going to fit. Trust me in this. No matter how many ways you try to get us to twist and angle this thing, you can't change the laws of physics. The hallway is too small. The doorway is too small. The only way you are going to get this sectional into that room is to cut it in half, or remove the outside window and cut away six inches in all directions around the frame so that you can bring it in that way. We've got other people waiting for their furniture and we've wasted enough time here."
Well, now we've done it. Oh no. She's going to call her husband. He won't be happy. Oh you betcha, he won't. She's having to call him up from his violin lessons down the hall, and he hates to be interrupted in the middle of his lessons just because the movers are too incompetent to move a simple sofa into the next room. I don't know what we had anticipated, but when her husband answered his summons five minutes later he didn't quite cut the imposing figure that we had been expecting. He stood a full head shorter than his wife, weighed in at (barely) 90 pounds and was wearing a clean, white collared shirt, red bow tie and black knee-length shorts. He brandished an expensive violin in one hand and an equally-expensive bow in the other. Did I mention the Coke-bottle glasses?
He took in the situation with a single, silent glance: two long-suffering delivery men, a huge 4-seater blocking the hall and an angry wife. She explained it all to him, including the parts about how we refused to follow her simple instructions, and were too incompetent to move a sofa. He motioned with the bow and asked the expected questions. "Did you try twisting it this way? How about that way? Did you try standing it on end? Oh, I see, the ceiling is too low for that. Well it's obviously not going to fit then."
After a bit of sparring back and forth, his wife finally convinced him that they should have us move it into the living room so that she could hire "some qualified movers" after we were gone. Moving it into the living room was a simple matter of lugging it straight into their bedroom, across their king-sized bed, out the sliding doors and down the length of the balcony to the sliding doors into the living room. Aside from the logistics of hiking it over the bed without mussing the sheets with our dirty clothes, we had to balance it on a 10th story rail until we had enough of it outside to swing it around lengthwise on the balcony. We almost lost it over the side of the building. Once. Eventually we left it sitting diagonally in the middle of their living room and, 90 minutes after arriving at the apartment, we left for our next delivery. The cheap bitch didn't even tip us after all that work.
A week later I saw the 4-seater back in the factory. Normally we didn't accept custom pieces back unless there was a flaw in the workmanship, and I wondered if she had accused us of damaging the piece in some way during the move. When I took a closer look work tag it made my day - nay, it made my whole week. It bore three words: "Cut in half"
Back in the dark ages, I used to earn my minimum wage as a warehouseman and part-time swamper for a furniture factory. The work was hard, the hours were long, the play was low, the customers (mostly) sucked and the boss was a cheap bastard. On the up side - well, in retrospect I don't think there was any up side to that job. If the job market had not been so tight at the time I would have quit and found another place to take abuse for pay, but my motto of the day was "food before pride".
Though I was usually stuck in the warehouse, I usually jumped at the chance when they needed a swamper because it got one outside for awhile, and brought with it the chance to earn some paltry tips on top of one's starvation wage. On the other side of the ledger, you got to deal face-to-face with customers. Most were okay, but there were more than a few wingnuts out there whose very existence was an indictment on the viability of humanity.
One day I got tapped to work as a swamper when one of the regulars called off sick. Normally I'd have rejoiced, but this was the day that they were delivering THE SECTIONAL. Everyone knew about this piece of furniture - it was a custom-order piece, done up in an early-80s plain design with squared arms (an important detail) and a white cotton finish. It was a 4 x 2 seater, and was heavy as it was large. What made this particular move special was that not only was the piece large, awkward and heavy, but it was being delivered to an apartment. Oh, and not just any apartment, but one of those mid-rise ones along the waterfront that were renown more for their view than for their spaciousness. Tenth floor. Of course the people took measurements before they bought this large piece, right? I mean, that makes sense doesn't it? It seems they did - sort of. They measured the dimensions of the room it was going into and had it custom built to exactly fit.
We got both parts of the sectional to the appropriate floor, and then the fun began. When D (the driver) rang the bell, Satan's 50-something sister answered the door, gave us a friendly sneer and said, "Oh, you're finally here. We want it in the music room." We moved the two-seat portion in first so that we could scout out the route before tackling the larger piece, and we discovered a minor problem. The entryway to the apartment was a narrow hall with an eightish-foot ceiling. About ten feet in, the hall one had the option of proceeding straight into the bedroom, or taking a ninety-degree left turn into another hall where the ceiling dropped about a foot. Why did the ceiling drop a foot? One might speculate that the designer disliked large furniture, or perhaps he was just a moron. In any event, that second hallway ended at the living room, with a small doorway midway (six feet) down it's length leading into a music room on the right.
When we went out to collect the four-seater, I said to the driver, "There's not a hope in Hell that this thing is going to go around the first corner, let alone into the music room." He agreed, but decided that it would be best to make a token effort to appease the customer. We spent about ten minutes trying to negotiate the first corner, figuring that would be enough to illustrate to her that it was not going to happen. Anyone who has moved furniture for a living has probably run into this though... she magically transformed from a rich, bitter, middle-aged bitch into the master of space and physics who can make anything possible.. I've never understood why a lay person will assume that they have more knowledge about moving furniture than the professionals, but everyone seems to be an expert. They know how to make it work. Everything will fit if you just twist it the right way. When we offered to give up she demanded that we try again. After ten more minutes of futility, D told her, "I'm sorry, but this just isn't going to fit around that corner. If it had tapered arms it might just get around the first corner, but with the lowered ceiling in the hall we still wouldn't be able to get it through that second doorway into the music room.
"Nonsense! We measured it. You simply don't know what you're doing! Just pick it up again and do what I tell you." She began to shrill out orders like a drill sergeant. "Lift that corner higher. Higher I say. Move it to the left. Move it to the right. Drop your corner. Twist it to the right. Twist it to the left. Higher! Lower! Higher! Twist it around again. Take it back outside and bring it back in upside down!"
(Insert another fifteen minutes of futility here.)
"Lift your end up some more!"
"Ma'am, it's pressed against the ceiling now."
"Then slide it more to the left!"
"It's against the wall."
"Then slide it to the right. I don't know why you are having so much trouble with this! Why couldn't they send somebody who knows what they are doing?"
Now that was exactly the wrong thing to say to D. Up until now he had been humouring her, but D had forgotten more than this lady would ever know about moving large, bulky objects into tight living quarters. He put down his end of the sectional, turned to her and said (paraphrased here to make it more family friendly), "Lady, this thing isn't going to fit. Trust me in this. No matter how many ways you try to get us to twist and angle this thing, you can't change the laws of physics. The hallway is too small. The doorway is too small. The only way you are going to get this sectional into that room is to cut it in half, or remove the outside window and cut away six inches in all directions around the frame so that you can bring it in that way. We've got other people waiting for their furniture and we've wasted enough time here."
Well, now we've done it. Oh no. She's going to call her husband. He won't be happy. Oh you betcha, he won't. She's having to call him up from his violin lessons down the hall, and he hates to be interrupted in the middle of his lessons just because the movers are too incompetent to move a simple sofa into the next room. I don't know what we had anticipated, but when her husband answered his summons five minutes later he didn't quite cut the imposing figure that we had been expecting. He stood a full head shorter than his wife, weighed in at (barely) 90 pounds and was wearing a clean, white collared shirt, red bow tie and black knee-length shorts. He brandished an expensive violin in one hand and an equally-expensive bow in the other. Did I mention the Coke-bottle glasses?
He took in the situation with a single, silent glance: two long-suffering delivery men, a huge 4-seater blocking the hall and an angry wife. She explained it all to him, including the parts about how we refused to follow her simple instructions, and were too incompetent to move a sofa. He motioned with the bow and asked the expected questions. "Did you try twisting it this way? How about that way? Did you try standing it on end? Oh, I see, the ceiling is too low for that. Well it's obviously not going to fit then."
After a bit of sparring back and forth, his wife finally convinced him that they should have us move it into the living room so that she could hire "some qualified movers" after we were gone. Moving it into the living room was a simple matter of lugging it straight into their bedroom, across their king-sized bed, out the sliding doors and down the length of the balcony to the sliding doors into the living room. Aside from the logistics of hiking it over the bed without mussing the sheets with our dirty clothes, we had to balance it on a 10th story rail until we had enough of it outside to swing it around lengthwise on the balcony. We almost lost it over the side of the building. Once. Eventually we left it sitting diagonally in the middle of their living room and, 90 minutes after arriving at the apartment, we left for our next delivery. The cheap bitch didn't even tip us after all that work.
A week later I saw the 4-seater back in the factory. Normally we didn't accept custom pieces back unless there was a flaw in the workmanship, and I wondered if she had accused us of damaging the piece in some way during the move. When I took a closer look work tag it made my day - nay, it made my whole week. It bore three words: "Cut in half"
