The Incubus free moving service

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Too mild for a pitting so…

Last week my best friend asked me if I could help his fiancee move out of her University apartment. He knew I was off Monday and since she had back problems she couldn’t lift anything heavy, leaving him unable to carry the larger stuff by himself. Since he helped me move several times, I agreed to spend my day off to drive 2 hours to the apt and help them load stuff in the moving van.

In general, my friends are reasonable people. They appreciated my willingness to help. However they also have a tendency to get a little over their head and it is often myself who ends up paying the price. In this case, it was planning the move. Because his fiancee was ‘nostalgic’ about leaving college, NOTHING was packed when I got there. I had assumed they needed me for bulky, heavy stuff like furniture- better to leave the organizing/boxing to the person who owns the possessions. But oh well, I had already driven two hours, and can’t change the reality that its going to take longer than expected.

Then comes the next (un)pleasant surprise- we are moving not just fiancee’s stuff, but her best friend/roomate’s stuff. Apparently they went halvsies on renting a moving truck. My friend neglects to inform me all of this until I’ve already arrived. No problem, I tell him. Surely she, and her own sturdy team of Y-chromisome packing compatriots will assist us, right? Of course, he replies. What time will they get there?

7PM…and its only noon when he gives me this news :smack: Apparently we can’t even START on her room until she gets there because fiancee doesn’t know what she’s bringing or leaving behind, etc generally just a big pain in the behind because it means the whole thing is going to take longer. Also, my friend needs me to stay for the whole thing to drive him back to pick up his car back in San Jose (long story). I’m obviously very unhappy but motivated to return the favor for helping him. I figure we work hard to get fiancee’s stuff completely moved then relax while roomie and her friends load their stuff. That’s not exactly how it played out. Here’s a timeline:

12:00PM- I arrive, start helping to pack in earnest
5:00- Making good progress, we take a beer break figuring other ppl will be there in a few hours.
7:00- Roomate has not shown up yet. No other friends are able (or willing) We start moving her stuff so we won’t be there all night.
9:30- Roomate calls fiancee to say she’s just left and is on her way. Should take her about an hour to get there.
11:30- Roomate arrives, no doubt distracted by squirrels on the way up or something :mad: conveniently when we are putting the last of her stuff in the moving van.

I’m pretty livid about it. I didn’t mind helping my best friend and his fiancee move, because that’s what I promised I’d do. But I think the roomate totally got off the hook by basically showing up at the last minute. Everyone (cept the girl who got free moving service) was exhausted and cranky, and yelling about it at the time would have accomplished nothing. But still, I felt a little bamboozled. The only reason I stayed is because I didn’t want to strand my friend on the principle that I only promised to help HIS fiancee move, but I got sucked into doing a lot more work/spending more time than I originally planned.

2

You debt is paid in full.

3

My sister played the couldn’t pack to move thing. It was the last time I helped her move.

The roommate pulled that shit to get out of moving stuff. You guys should have left all her crap and drove away. I’m betting she didn’t sign the truck rental agreement.

4

I went through something similar years ago. A friend was moving and asked for help loading the truck. We all knew that she was a bit of a ditz, but she assured us that everything would be packed and ready to go onm moving day.

So of course, when we got there Saturday morning almost nothing was packed. Not only that but it didn’t look like she had enough boxes and, worse, a lot of the ones she had were small (I’m talking like about a foot cubed. We all looked at each other, thought about the times she had helped each of us move in the past, and sighed. Several of the women started packing while the guys started carrying stuff down the three flights of stairs. I had bad knees, so I stationed myself at the truck and loaded the boxes and furniture into it as they came down, occasionally getting status reports on the packing and requesting things that would fit into the spaces I had.

At one point she came down to check on the truck, concerned that it wasn’t being loaded properly. I sent her back upstairs after reminding her that I’d moved, or helped move, more than some people had had hot dinners (which was only a bit of an exaggeration).

Finally everything was fitted into the truck and we got to her new place. Of course, she had no idea where she wanted everything, so we reversed the loading process, managing to get the truck unloaded in time to return it.

She hasn’t moved since then, for which we were all eternally grateful.

5

Except that if they’re both on the lease, and that was the day they had to be moved out by, the landlord could have charged them BOTH for stuff left. Very few landlords care when you give them the “it was all my roommate’s stuff!” excuse.

6

This. The more I inquired to my friend about why the hell we got sucked into so much work the more I found out how they had kind of put themselves in the situation-

The apartment was rented out to college students. 7 people lived there originally. But my friend’s fiancee and her friend did a study abroad program and were gone for a month and a half, so everyone else was moved out and I guess the landlord was waiting on the last two ladies to come back to the states and move out.

Why they didn’t just do this beforehand? Nostalgia; its their last semester there, and my friend’s roomate wasn’t yet ready to accept she isn’t in college anymore :rolleyes:

The upshot to the whole thing is knowing the next time they ask me for help, I’ll be happy to oblige albeit under my own conditions and terms. Had they asked me for suggestions on how to do this I would have said ‘movers’ since I did that on my last move- by shopping around and haggling I got a studio apt worth of stuff moved from one town to another for only $150 and it took less than an hour.

7

Gah. I’ve had that happen to me with three different sets of friends, and it’s not too mild for a pitting! Unpacked movers were the 11th plague of Passover, Moses just didn’t write about it because it was the Jews who were moving.

8

Years ago a friend asked me to come to Pittsburgh to help his friend (a man I didn’t even know) move. What the heck, pizza and beer… well, not only were they not packed - they were still doing laundry in the washer and dryer - that we were supposed to move.

I haven’t let him forget that.

9

Coulda been worse.

Last time I moved the Incubi and Sucubi were so bad we had to call in professional exterminators.

10

As Iridescent Orb wrote, you are now paid in full.

Somehow, there’s no getting around that sort of thing. Just prepare a good excuse for the next time you’re asked to help move that friend or anyone connected to him.