Hello friends!
Long time no seeeeee!!!
Did you miss meeeeeee?!?!?
I know I sure as hell did!
I apologize to those of you who have noticed my untimely absence, but hopefully from the title, you can gather what has transpired this week!
So, without further ado, I invite you to pour that third glass of wine because this one's a doozy ya'll! Let's buckle up and hold on tight, this will be a ride of realizations you were definitely unprepared for!!!
Let's rewind 48 hours. Allow me to set the mood...
It's Thursday night, March 7th of 2024.
I'm tired, exhausted, slowly approaching March 8th and I am unprepared for what Friday will actually hold!
I finally allow myself to rest at 2:30am Friday morning only to wake at 5:30am.
As I'm sure you've now gathered, March 8th of 2024 marked the first day of our transitioning into a new residence!!!!
I was so excited because we hired movers!!
We only moved within our same community but our former residence was ground level and our new residence is on the 3rd MF floor. There was NO EFFING WAY I was going to haul all our belongings as a family of 5 up a single damn step, even the curb is questionable at best.
Thankfully, my husband obliged and appreciated the sentiment.
We hired a local small business and I'm so glad we did HOWEVER we had zero clue what to expect and what was considered normal vs not typical.
The movers were great and super helpful, took care of the bulk of a lot of stuff.
They ended up being here about 7 hours and we fed them and I tipped them each $100 (there were 3 of them!).
The total for our move ended up being over double of the minimum 3 hour quote, which was expected considering they were here well over 3 hours, right?!
They came to our new residence and stated "we're all done, sign here to acknowledge the final amount due" we took their word for it and paid in cash (mistakes #1 & #2).
My husband returned to the previous address and became growingly pissed the eff off.
I hadn't seen the old residence since I left at 11am and headed the new place to start unpacking.
A couple things you need to know about my husband are:
He is the most patient and level headed person in my entire life. I admire that about him.
He will never complain, even if a complaint is completely valid.
I am the overly vocal and aggressive communicator who lacks tact and my delivery is off 105% of the time (I see you, autism!)
My husband, on the other hand, is the opposite. He would rather stay quiet than contribute to an unnecessary level of conflict/confrontation.
Knowing all of the above (and assuming some others, I'm sure), you can imagine my utter surprise when he came back to our new home and stated
"Call the company immediately and request a partial refund. They did not complete the job!"
I honored that man's wishes without question and I was secretly getting a little flustered from the assertiveness!!
After speaking with the owner, we learned a few things:
We were supposed to have a final walkthrough of the old residence which we were never offered that and had no idea that was a thing as we were first timers in hiring a moving company.
NEVER PAY IN CASH SO YOU CAN DISPUTE THE FREAKING CHARGES
Be honest and provide proof, my dad recorded an entire video of our old place and the state in which it was left, which I promptly sent to the owner. Ignoring the random items all over the floor, I told them to leave those things, there was clearly some miscommunication even though I CLEARLY labeled all items with bright orange sticky notes that needed to be taken and the location in which to leave them in the new home. All of those items were left...
So, today, my husband had to call out of work again (that's over 16 hours of UNPAID working hours and, outside of tax season, my husband is the primary income earner). I also was forced to take yesterday off because of the jarring realization we had of our former residence being incomplete.
The move that we paid $1.5k to be finished in 1 day ended up being a 2 day move, with only 1 day of paid help.....
As you can imagine, my husband was mostly alone in getting the old place cleared out. My dad did stop by with some power tools to help remove the TV mounts and the curtain rods and coat closet hanging bar and then he came to the new residence and hung them. My mom watched the kids for about an hour until later in the day when I took my daughter to a birthday party (I know, I don't know why I committed to that weeks ago, but I had to honor my word for the sake of my daughter).
Fast forward, my husband was in the old apartment while I was at this birthday party with G
and he was exhausted and stressed and pissed off that basically my entire net paycheck funded a move that they didn't even finish and we were waiting to hear what they would be willing to compensate us for. I told her I want the initial 3 hour fee honored and the rest returned. They have to discuss it as a team and I fully respect that, so now we're waiting.
I digress....
I call my husband on our way home and tell him I'm going to stop by the old place first and have all the items on the sidewalk ready to load up my G-Ride (aka my all automatic mini van haha) and be done with it!
I get there and thankfully decide to do a final walkthrough of the old place because, OH.MY.WORD. It was not gutted in full.
Also, the AirPods I asked my husband to grab several times were still where I told him to grab them even though he said he already did! Also, they are currently on sale!!! I bought them during the same sale period!
So I was obviously upset that the house was not cleared and proceeded to gather items that ultimately we could have survived without, but remember what I said up there? That little comment about tact and delivery?!
Well yeah, I fully displayed my lack there of in this moment. Oy, the awkward truth of life on the spectrum.
My husband had a few choice words of his own as well, which is super uncommon for him. Truly, he's not one for confrontation whereas I'm pressing my nose against yours making sure you're aware I'm talking to you!!!
I have lots of friends because of this:
While the neighbors within our community were enjoying the beautiful southern CA weather and amazing views, I was screaming obscenities from our old residence's porch at my amazing husband who just slaved away while I watched our kids.
Yeah, I'll accept my award for "Wife of the Year" now...
Come to find out, the reason behind his rage was a totally falsified comment from the people who I thought loved me the most and were helping because they cared (queue in emotional childhood trauma!).
After unleashing my unabashed, unfiltered, and totally expected response to his abhorrent comments and interpretation of what I did for the day while he was here alone working on the house, he checked himself and later apologized.
Moral of the story is this:
If you ever hire movers, DO A FINAL FUCKING WALKTHROUGH and NEVER fall for the trap of a discounted rate for paying in cash. PERIODT
In closing, my marriage did survive yet another move just not without the mandatory rage fit that comes with moving and unmet expectations
Speaking of "unmet expectations", I'll leave you with the following to digest:
Expectations are always premeditated resentments.
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