Anyone who's ever moved knows my pain. Over Labor Day weekend, my girlfriend and I moved out of an apartment in Brighton and into our new apartment in the South End. It was an overwhemling experience. While I love our new building and especially it's location, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel was easier said than done. Over the course of 5 exhausting days, I planned and packed, drove multiple trips through the worst traffic I've ever experienced, and sweated profusely as I lugged heavy boxes and massive pieces of furniture up and down twisting stair-wells. There's really nothing quite like it. Still, at the end of the day, these inconveniences come with the territory. What I hadn't counted on was the lack of help and utter indifference on behalf of the morons we encountered along the way.
In Boston, if you decide not to pay for a monthly parking space, you have no choice but to get a resident parking permit. This magical sticker allows you to park in the general area you are moving to (assumming you can find a spot), and is one of the few remaining things in this world that one can have free of charge. On Friday August 31st, we both made sure to leave work a few hours early so that we could pick up our aptartment keys and drive to city hall to get our new stickers. In a perfect world, they would simply mail them to us, but you have to pick your battles. We took every precaution that we could before-hand, including calling city hall days earlier to find out exactly what we need to bring with us; a signed copy of our lease, official moving forms, and a bill for our new address. I immediately took issue with the last requirement, since not yet living in our new apt. clearly prevents us from having any bills sent there. I was told we could instead bring copies of our updated car registration. Fair enough.
After our 10 minute drive to city hall turned into a 45 minute trek down a series of 1-way streets, weaving around dozens of giant moving trucks, we finally arrived to find no parking. After circling for 30 minutes, we finally found a spot, and were excitedly prepared to park when the father of the car leaving held up the dreaded "1-minute" finger. We rolled our eyes as he let his youngest boy out of the backseat. Our jaws dropped as the boy proceeded to urinate next to the car right in the middle of Fanuel Hall for what seemed like an eternity. This was obviously this family's first day on our planet having never heard of a bathroom.
Once inside city hell, I mean hall, we observed the formality of watching our cell phones and wallets take a ride along the security table as both security guards chatted away, failing to glance at our possessions even once. From there we took our places at the back of the world's longest line, people coming from all angles to eventually speak face-to-face with one of four women behind glass windows holding the keys to our happiness. The last time I waited in a line like this was at Splash Mountain. With each passing minute, we nervously checked the clock, knowing full well that the building closes promptly at 4:30pm. But as we got closer to our destination, I began to feel a sense of relief. It would all be over soon.
When we got to the window, we proudly began to pass our materials under the window. "Where's your old stickers?", she barked rudely. "Nobody told us to bring those." She shook her head and I knew we were in trouble. "We don't give out new stickers without having the old stickers returned." One would think this information might have been valuable when I called the parking clerk days before. When I told her we didn't know that, she asked us for the I.D. number of the person we spoke to. What kind of bullshit question is that? I wasn't aware I should be asking for a personal identification number in the rare chance the idiot on the phone didn't know what the hell she was talking about. The last time I had gone for a parking permit, the woman I spoke with had been considerably more helpful, even subtly telling me to forge my landlord's signature on my lease when I hadn't been able to have it signed ahead of time. That woman had understood that this process is merely a silly formality, and that she gained nothing by giving an honest kid a hard time. Not so this time around. After pleading our case over and over, we finally gave up, and I left city hell cursing the woman aloud like a rambling tourette syndrome patient. While a major pain-in-the-ass, this experience would've been easier to accept if we had another chance to get parking stickers the next day. But since city hell is closed on weekends and holidays, we would have to wait until Tuesday to take our second shot.
On Saturday the 1st, we moved some smaller items and cleaned our new apartment all day until it looked brand new. We would've liked to get our rental truck from U-Haul on that day, but being September 1st, apparantly that was out of the question. The earliest we could get a truck was Sunday the 2nd, although we caught a break because we knew the person moving into our old apartment in Brighton. This afforded us some flexibility in terms of when we had to move out. We got reasonable sleep that night, knowing we had to be at the U-Haul in Medford (is there a more Boston sounding town?) early the next morning. Our reservation was from 9am to 3pm, shorter than we would've liked, so we made sure to get there at 8:30am, so we'd at least be near the front of the line. Despite being 4th, it took us half an hour to reach the power hungry snob who'd already warned customers not to break the rules at "her" store. To our disgust, she couldn't find our reservation, until checking another location, U-Haul of Medford, which was located in Sommerville. What? Apparantly, there are 2 U-Hauls of Medford, but the one we need is located in Sommerville. Are a team of retarted monkeys running this company? Of course the woman couldn't answer our question as to why the Sommerville location also carried the name of Medford. We asked if upon going there we could at least go to the front of the line. Nope, we'd have to wait again. By that time it would've been almost Noon, leaving us no way to finish our move, since a later reservation demanded our truck be returned by 3pm. Once I decided it would not be in our best interest to start shooting U-Haul employees, I called the other location and arranged for a pick-up the following morning, Labor Day, a point we'd hoped to have been long finished by. Frustrated, we spent the afternoon loading and unloading our cars with everything that would fit. But upon arriving at our apt., we heard some people inside, leading to the following exchange . . .
"Can I help you?"
"We are here to clean the apartment."
"What are you talking about?"
"Didn't anyone tell you we were coming?"
At this point I am practically foaming at the mouth. What the hell kind of favor is it to send in a cleaning team 2 full days after our lease begins? What if U-Haul hadn't screwed us and we already had everything moved in? Had anyone from the rental company or the landlord notified us to this "service," wouldn't we have found a more productive way to spend Saturday, rather than cleaning every inch of our apartment. Having only arrived a few minutes before us, we thanked the cleaners anyway, but told them we'd already cleaned everything. They apologized and told us we should call the company and let them know what happened, which I did in a clear, though undeniably pissed-off sounding voicemail. The Beef must lay down the law from time to time.
Monday, the 3rd, more or less went off without a hitch. About time! We picked up the truck from U-haul in Sommerville (where the employees were far more intelligent), loaded all morning and unloaded all afternoon. The guy in charge of this location felt bad about the screwup, and basically gave us as long as we needed. After returning the monster truck, we had lunch with our old roomate, and finally settled in to our South End apt. Falling asleep that night was a relief, as we could finally put the weekend behind us (so we thought).
The next morning, (Tuesday, the 4th) I received a wake-up text message from U-haul saying they had no record of us having returned our truck. I ignored this, figuring one of the 3,000 morons employed at the company would sort this mess out. Only an hour later I got the same repeat message. I called them, but couldn't get through. In the mean-time I went outside to start scraping the old resident parking sticker off my car, only to find a ticket for having the wrong sticker. And I thought this was gonna be a good day. I considered using this ticket as toilet paper, but then realized if I did that the chance of having this ticket appealed would be considerably diminshed (I have since successfully appealed it and had it dropped like a bad habit). Anyway, my old sticker wasn't coming off at all. I called city hell and told them it wouldn't come off. The woman told me to use water and a towel, like this was some revolutionary approach I hadn't already thought of. When I told her it didn't work, she said try again and that it does work. It was like talking to a fucking robot! My girlfriend made the same call an hour later and was given the same response. She had been scraping it off, but found that miniscule bits of paper were coming off, and it was completely illegible. Before hanging up, she made sure that it was ok to bring in whatever we had, even if it was these paper scraps on a washcloth. And as a last resort, she took down the woman's I.D. number. If she was gonna duck out of work early again as she had on Friday, she wasn't taking any chances.
A few hours passed until we were once again on our way to the parking clerk office, this time loaded with large ziplock bags filled with damp washcloths upon which our final hope of obtaining new stickers fell. Stuck again in traffic, I finally reached a U-haul representitive on the phone, who told me to ignore the earlier text message, because it was computerized and they were just really behind on updating their information. As we arrived, we again found no parking spot, and began to get very nervous as we circled the area for the 5th time. While she drove, I called to see if it would be possible for just one of us to go in and get the stickers, so she could double-park somewhere.
"Why of course you can."
Remember that scene in American Beauty when Annette Benning realizes her life is falling apart and screams at the top of her lungs holding her head while "All Right Now" begins blasting in the background? That was me. How did nobody have the foresight to let us know that only one person needed to be present for this debacle? Why is it not on any of their information forms? Why did none of the people on the phone notify us of this? They must all be related to the rental group that sent the cleaning people to our apartment, but forgot to tell us.
By some miracle, we did find a spot, walked to the building, waited in line, where we confronted a woman who was also in this awful line for the second time. By the way, I must've looked like an absolute nut-ball walking around everywhere with this wet washcloth in a see-through bag, covered in littered paper. How did security not stop me to inquire whether this was a bomb? Regardless, the other woman in front of us was complaining to a supervisor about a problem, and since she seemed sympathetic, we told her our story. She told us to cut the rest of the line and go to "that" window. "That" window turned out to be home to the viscious, unholy bitch who had caused this mess in the first place. We looked at the supervisor, sook our heads, and pointed out the demon lady as the one who'd rejected us previously. We were assured it'd be fine and we sighed as she disappeared to the back. About 3 minutes later we were called to the bench. We approached her window with the confidence of 2 terrified kids who'd just broken a window in their abusive father's brand new Lexus. We handed her all the paper work and signed a couple of forms. Much to the woman's disgust, I think the supervisor had said something to her about helping us out. It was all that could explain her unexpected compliance. Then came the washcloths.
"And your old stickers?" We handed over the wet bags, said briefly what we'd been told to bring and looked away. She rolled her eyes and began recording something in her computer. She handed us back 1 bag and then gave us our new stickers. "Can I have my bag back?" I asked. "No, we need to keep it." What????? We watched in amazement as she placed the bag into a file cabinet. Was she insane? We walked away, too tired to argue anymore with this spiteful little woman. We couldn't help but laugh. I wish we could've been there to see her explain to her supervisor at the end of the week why there was a soggy, damp, black washcloth mixed in with all the forms, stickers, and tickets. If there is any justice in the world, her boss walked away and came back with a mop and a plunger, before informing her that the city hall shitters were backed up. Oh well, I suppose in hindsight for the cost of 1 good washcloth this woman was out of our lives forever.
We we practically singing on the way back to the car. After stopping to have a late-lunch at HardRock Cafe (home of the world's most senselessly overpriced burger), we headed home. Parking a car legally never felt so good. After placing my new resident parking sticker on the back windshield, I leaned over and kissed it. I felt like Kevin Costner discovering dry land in Waterworld. As we walked up the steps of our brownstone building, a great calm overtook me. I would no longer have to speak or hear the words; city hall, parking at city hall, incompetent city hall employees, resident parking sticker, resident parking tickets, U-Haul, Medford, Medford in Sommerville, unwanted cleaning crew, window D, Labor Day traffic, and most importantly, moving, again. At least, that is, until next September.
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