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The long moving job of the soul
Pianos pin you on stairwells. Sofa beds squish your spine. Air conditioners slice your fingers. And you wonder why I’m not a mover anymore.
BY CHRIS WRIGHT

I will never, ever, EVER move furniture again.

Steve O’Rourke, former mover

One sultry day in the summer of ’92, I came this close to being hit by a fridge.

It was August, the height of the busy season, and everyone at the Joe Scolio Moving Company* was feeling the strain. In the midst of one particularly hellish job, a co-worker and I were hauling a refrigerator up some stairs — he on top, I on the bottom — when, oops, the other guy just let go. "Look out!" he howled, which seemed like good enough advice. I bolted, the fridge followed. I leapt, the fridge thundered into a wall. The entire incident couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but I’ll never forget it. My sphincter, certainly, will never be the same.

Those who worked for Scolio at the time will know, immediately and with terrible certainty, that the person on the other end of that fridge was none other than Stuart Lewis.** We all lived in fear of working with Stuart. His clumsiness was legendary. We even made up a song about it (to the tune of Devo’s "Whip It"):

Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh

Grab that piece!

Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh

Take it to the truck.

Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh

Step on a strap.

Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh

Break your partner’s back.

I tell this story now not to denigrate my former co-worker (the dope) but to add another piece of evidence to an already-incontrovertible truth: moving sucks donkey. Even when you’re not working with the likes of Stuart, the job is a huge pain in the neck — not to mention the back, the knees, the balls, and the psyche. I cannot say how many times, over the course of my 10 years in the business, a customer turned to me and said, "What are you, nuts?" It’s a good question.

The moving trade is like the old French Foreign Legion, its ranks filled with misfits, dropouts, and delinquents. There is money to be made — few other professions offer toothless wrecks $15-plus per hour — but at a heavy toll. In the summer, there are the heart-bursting walk-ups. In winter, there’re the icy ramps. Pianos pin you on stairwells. Sofa beds squish your spine. Washers crush your feet. Air conditioners slice your fingers. Bed frames crack you on the head. And it’s not only inanimate objects you have to worry about — one time, a customer came at me with a hammer.

Moving day is stressful. Nerves are frayed, and people tend to get paranoid. They’ll watch you leerily, just daring you to nick that walnut tabletop. They’ll come sneaking into bedrooms, convinced, no doubt, that they are about to catch you with a pair of their daughter’s underwear on your head. But the good mover will work with this. He will offer soothing words, exude an air of professionalism. If a piece — a glass-fronted china cabinet that has been in the family for generations, say — gets wedged in a stairway, the experienced mover will calmly advise his co-worker on the best course of action: "Push the thing! Push! God help us! What’s that noise?! What’s that fucking noise?! Sweet Jesus! You’re ruining it!" And so on.

Sometimes, moving day is more of a strain on the mover than the movee, particularly when you show up to find that not a single item has been packed. You’ll pick up a pair of tweezers or a sock and say, "This needs to go in a box," which will elicit a sharp intake of breath from the customer, who sees your refusal to make 400,000 trips up and down the stairs as nothing more than brute obstinacy. One time I lifted up a couch cushion to find a large, vein-riddled dildo. "This," I said to the customer for the 500th time that day, "needs to go in a box."

Even more dreadful than the unpacked customers are the unhygienic ones — though often the two overlap. You’ll encounter wadded tissues and crusty forks, their tines matted with pubic hair and scurf. And there’s nothing grimmer than, during a break, getting halfway through a large Italian sub and suddenly remembering that you’re gripping the thing with fingers that, minutes ago, you had to peel away from the edges of a greasy box spring.

The worst customers of all — the ones who can drive the most stable mover to thoughts of murder-suicide — are the Underestimaters: those who neglect to mention, for instance, their 2000-strong collection of rare bluegrass LPs. "Oops!" they’ll giggle as they point to five cast-iron stoves in the corner of the attic. This is where a mover’s diplomacy comes into play. "Sure, we’ll be glad to move your collection of rusty anvils," you’ll say. "No problem!" And all the while you’ll be thinking, "Green!"

Often, a customer will tip — especially for tough jobs. That moment when the sofa bed you’re hoisting to a third-floor porch seems about to drag you to your death is mitigated by the fact that you will likely be rewarded for your troubles. When you’re staggering home at night, a little bit of green can make it seem almost worthwhile. I remember one occasion, toward the end of a 15-hour day, when a customer changed his mind about a large rug he’d had us lug up to the third floor. Would we mind trying it in the den? Sure! Afterward, the guy went for his wallet. He pulled out a scrap of paper, wrote something down, and put the wallet away again. Damn!

As it turned out, the summer of the runaway fridge and the cheap-assed rug guy was to be my last with Joe Scolio. And I wasn’t the only one. As we drove back to the yard one hot September night — sweaty, dirty, tired, aching from the bones out — my friend Steve turned to me and said, with absolute conviction, "I will never, ever, EVER move furniture again." Today, Steve is a lawyer in DC. I heard Stuart lost his front teeth in an accident. I’m only glad I wasn’t there to see it.

*Not the company’s real name.

** This is his real name.

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com

Issue Date: August 22 - 29, 2002
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