Moving again

While staying in Gloucester.

Having returned from visiting friends in CT, NY, and PA, I'm now back
at home, working for Hiltz Moving & Storage, whom I worked for back in
2000, just before starting at Bowdoin.

It's going well, so far, nice to be getting the exercise, and to have
a regular routine.

It's kind of a strange job too, because complete strangers let you
look through all their stuff, carry it around, whatever.

Yesterday I went on a big unloading job with 3 of the other guys (I'm
not sure how big the crew is, but it's over 10), all Brazilian (at
least 6 of the guys working there are Brazilian). We were helping a
family move into a house in Manchester, and, as the only fluent
English-speaker, I was sort of responsible for making sure the other
guys understood everything. That didn't work out perfectly, but there
were no huge problems.

It was a big, long job though, the three of us who left first ended up
clocking out at 7:30pm on the dot, and the day started at 8. But it
wasn't all hot and tiring. Moving families is almost always a good
experience, overall, in no small part due to the fact that it means
there's a mother around. In this case we were given water, soda, and
after the work was done, she had two fresh pizzas waiting for us. It
was pretty sweet.

At the same time though, it was not an entirely smooth move. Moving
tends to be a fairly stressful thing for the clients, and yesterday
was no exception. Although they seemed to resolve the problem, there
were a couple times when the husband and wife got in a couple pretty
heated arguments, one of which ended with her commanding us to take
her husbands clothes up to the master bedroom. There were also a few
times where they'd be on cell phones, talking as if we weren't there,
about things like selling the old house, depositing money, etc. The
kinds of things that go along with moving, but it felt strange to be
allowed to listen in. Not that I was trying too, but...

Today wasn't as exciting, nor as long, thankfully. For the most part
I stayed at the warehouse with Hercules, one of the Brazilian guys,
seems older than the others and he's on the heavy side of stockily
built, but he knows what he's doing and can move the stuff around. We
had to pack overseas shipping crates with a truckload of stuff we'd
all emptied onto the loading dock that morning. It took a good chunk
of the day, and got frustrating when we got down to the awkwardly
shaped furniture. There were two big couches, which we managed to
squeeze into the crates on an angle, then sled other stuff in
underneath them.

That's not fun, shoving boxes and bags into place while trapped
beneath a couch in a small corner of a crate. I've got several new
bumps, bruises, and cuts just from a few things. Especially this big
wood table the guy had. It was way too long and pretty wide. We were
hoping to fit it into a mostly empty crate that we'd put the last few
boxes and pieces of furniture into, but there was no way to get it to
fit. I briefly toyed with the idea of sawing off the legs, or cutting
it in half, either of which would have allowed it to squeeze in. Then
I remembered that the guy was getting shipped off to Pearl Harbor
because he's a Navy SEAL, and decided that that wasn't such a good
idea.

Anyway, I think I wanted to write more, but I'm too tired right now.
Oh yeah, did want to mention the ridiculous amount of packaging waste
sitting out by the dumpster now, what with plastic wrap, bubble wrap,
tape, paper, boxes, palettes, strapping, all sorts of stuff. The
pile' about as big as the dumpster itself is now.