When you’re 21 years old and a college student, it’s a fine idea to get together all your friends, especially the ones with trucks, buy pizza and beer and expect everyone to be happy because someday they, too, will have to move and will happily call on you.
HOWEVER, we’re all in our 30’s now. The last three times I moved, I ante’d up the bucks to pay some fuckin’ movers to move me. I did NOT call you up several times over the course of a month and give you a sob story about how I need to move and can’t find anyone to help. I did NOT ignore your subtle advice about how easy & cheap it is to hire movers nowadays, especially when you don’t have a lot of big furniture to move. I did NOT claim to not have the money to hire movers, then go out and spend $500 on a purebred puppy for my eight year old.
So Fuck You. I have little enough free time as it is. I am NOT spending my weekend carting your shit around, regardless of how upset you are about breaking up with your boyfriend who’s been cheating on you for 2 years and who has moved across the country and found another girlfriend already. PAY A FUCKING MOVER. We ALL do it now. I know you’re not rich, but boyoboy, you appear to have all the money in the world to do the stuff you want to do, and weren’t you just telling me you made 5 figures on the stock options from your last job?
However, I never ask anyone to help me either - I shell out the bucks and pay the pros. For one thing they’re much better at it - I have a 66 galon aquarium that weighs a tonne - last time I move the fellas just picked it up like it was an empty box. Second, I don’t have to worry if something gets broken - the movers insurance covers it - with friends moving you, you have the added stress in case something DOES get broke. You feel bad, they feel bad, it’s bad, bad, bad!
Many years ago, the Better Half was the one who always jumped in the car and drove over there to help people move. “Happy to do it!” he’d crow, and off he’d go. Did this for years and years. Usually he’d bring a cooler full of pop, too.
Then, when it came time for us to move, not simply across town, but from Dallas, Texas, back to Illinois, and he was the one on the phone calling people, “Hey, we’re, like, moving. Can you come help put stuff in the Ryder truck?” only one person showed up to help, and she was somebody’s mom who apologetically wasn’t up to any heavy lifting, but she did scrub all the baseboards and mop the floors for me.
So ever since then, when the call goes out, “Hey, we’re, like, moving…” he somehow always has something else he has to do that day.
If you own a pickup truck in a college town, you are automatically expected to help everybody move. Very hard to say no when they are panicking about how they have no idea how they’re going to move their bed. And, being poor, they really don’t have the resources to rent a Ryder, and, anyway, good luck finding one on the Weekend Leases Are Up unless you made a reservation in October.
So I have two rules.
I do not load the truck. I am a delicate flower. I am not wrestling with your recliner. So you better have some muscle on hand. If I’m feeling very generous I might help wrap your dishes in newspaper, but I helped four people move this weekend, so I feel that I’ve already done my part.
I drive. Oh, you do know how to drive a stick? That’s nice. My truck; I drive. I got marooned for three hours once when somebody said, “If you give me the keys, we’ll just take a load over and unload it quick and come right back.”
I won’t let anybody help me move. Granted, I never move most of my stuff (just buy new furniture, dishes, etc. at the thrift store when I get a new place). But I swore that I would never ever ever let anybody touch my records again after the time a friend decided to take my LPs out of their milk crates and stacked them vertically in a sweltering minivan. Jeezuz. Nobody touches my stuff.
When a friend asks me to help them move, I help them move!! That’s what friends do.
In fact, that’s when you find out who your real friends are. The ones that call up with an excuse are not friends. The ones that show up but leave before the job is finished are OK. The ones that stay to end are the people you can count on.
I don’t know what comedian said it, but
“A friend is someone who’ll help you move, a best friend is someone who’ll help you move a body.”
A friend asked me to help him move once, and I told him yes, provided he got other people to help too. I showed up, and I was the only one there. Helped him move his heavy, bulky stuff down two very narrow staircases. Until I just couldn’t do anymore. I told he he would have to go and get some other people, pronto, 'cause there was just no way I could do anymore.
I knew someone else who hired some movers by the hour, “just to move the heavy furniture.” I, and a few others, ended up giving him an entire Sunday to move all the boxes he told the movers to leave. We’re talking 10 trips with several full mini-vans.
The last time we moved, 1 1/2 years ago, Mrs. KVS hired movers, and we let them take every last thing. I’m getting too old for this stuff, and I don’t expect my friends to help either. There gets to a point when you simply have to put up the bucks.
I guess I have no friends, then, because #1) I would NEVER ask, let alone EXPECT, my friends to give up their weekend to help me move when both they and I know damn well that I can afford to pay professional movers, and #2) I expect them to do the same. I’d maybe make exceptions for some of my relatives who are in their early 20’s, going to school, and who have no money.
Moving companies are wonderful things. Unless you’re dirt poor and starving, use one.
Spooje, Here, here! I always help if asked and many times volunteer before asked. There was a movie about the OK corral where Doc Holiday was asked why he put out so much effort and put his life on the line to help Wyatt Earp. Doc said it was because he was a friend. The guy asking said “Heck, I would never do that and I’ve got plenty of friends.” Doc thinks a bit and says “Well, I don’t”. That’s EXACTLY how I feel!
No, no, no, never again. I’ll be 33 this year and I’m sorry, but that offer expired when I turned 30.
I last had a friend help move me in 1995, and I vowed that I would never put someone through that again. I of course owed him big time, and finally, over five years later, I paid back in spades when he opened his own retail shop. I spent several weekends riding shotgun on the floor of a U-Haul, making visits to what seemed like every goddamn Home Depot in the tri-state area.
But we’re all agreed that We Don’t Do These Things Anymore. You have the money, you pay professionals. End of discussion.
It’s a simple equation for me; you help me move, I help you move. Once you break the chain, I don’t help you anymore. Simple.
Oh, Podkayne, I call it Musical Apartments Weekend. Try not to be the last one left standing with all your stuff on the sidewalk and no apartment to move into :D)