U-Haul Hell
I wrote the following last night and saved it as a draft. It's a little messy but se la vie.
I'm drinking a beer and contemplating my infuriating day on hold. I was only calling to confirm my reservation because Mark and Kelley got surprized once by the bastards, and after hearing that kind of thing I wanna be prepared. I wasn't prepared enough apparently.
I wrote this to Mark somewhere in there...
-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Hartman [mailto:hartmbe@earlham.edu] Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 12:15 PM
To: Whitaker, Mark
Subject: ohmygod
Hey Dude,
I'm currently on hold with fuckin uhaul. I called to confirm what I thought was my reservation and lo and behold, what I thought was my reservation time was not what they had. I bitched at the guy for 10 minutes and then I tried calling his superior. I was nicer to his super. This guy calmly said that I should call the "Traffic" dept of uhaul, noting that they will be rather busy today. I tried calling for 10 minutes and then got connected. I told the nice lady, "Sure" when she asked if I could go on hold, and there I rot. Going on 20 minutes now.
Fuck.
When I called the Brookline U-Haul place, they said my reservation was for 7:30 am to 3 pm. Definitely not enough time, nor the right time to wrangle helpers.
Sooo, here are what I think are our options, ranked in order of preferance.
1. I can get the same truck for a more amenable time tomorrow.
2. I can get a slightly smaller truck for a more amenable time tomorrow.
3. I can get either the same or smaller truck for Sunday, all day.
4. I cancel my reservation, and try to find something for tomorrow.
5. I run away and join the army, learn how to kill then track down evil with the barrel of a gun. Saving my last bullet for the chump who denied me my truck.
6. Take a bath in some toxic substance, obtain super strength/speed and move everything in an instant.
Actually, I like 6 more than 5, so I'd like to switch those.
There you have it.
And I'm still on hold.
Fuck.
I'll be giving you a call later on to see how you're doing.
Later,
B
Mark wrote back...
Whitaker, Mark wrote:
> That fucking sucks. Do you have any emails or other proof of the
> original time that you scheduled?
and I sent this at 2:25
-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Hartman [mailto:hartmbe@earlham.edu] Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 2:25 PM
To: Whitaker, Mark
Subject: Re:ohmygodfckuhaul
I'm on hold again.
I just got done being on hold for 1/2 an hour, talked to someone for 2 minutes, made another call, and am on hold again. This shit is driving me crazy.
Long and short. The person I talked to before cancelled my reservation for the 26 foot truck, unbeknownst to me, and put in a request for a 17 footer at another location for Sunday. I thought I had to do this work and was not expecting her to do it for me. Since we had effectively changed our minds, we're again stuck with something we weren't expecting and now don't want. Did I say I hate uhaul recently? I hate uhaul.
I'm still on hold. I know they're busy, but so am I. I've spent the past 4 hours with a phone attached to my head when I was supposed to be productive.
grrrrrrrrrrr.
B
There you have it.
1 comment:
Thanks, everything worked out well in the end. Actually I should clarify, everything worked out in that we were able to move the vast majority of our stuff (with the help of some truly amazing assistance from Kelley, Mark and Laura) over an 8 hour span. We got the truck at 2 pm, filled and emptied a 17 foot truck twice, and returned the sucker at 10:30 that night.
Incidentally, the main bummer turned out not to be the U-Haul element, though that was a pain and next time I'll take your advice an' use Penske or Ryder. The problem was that we didn't have enough big/strong folks in the moving mix. Mark and I were there hefting the big stuff throughout but we're kinda small. Karla, Kelley, Dana, Cat, and Cat's pal Laura all did terrific jobs, an' hauled a ton of stuff, but they're not built to heft gigantic old couches up flights of stairs. The housemate who would have been the biggest help, wasn't able to be there because he was/is trying out for the U.S. National rowing team. Coincidentally he also has the most sheer amount of stuff. Not to mention the fact that much of that stuff was crazy heavy. I can't really blame him for not being there, if I had a dream gig like that come up, I'd hope my mates would be able to pull through without me (and not be too resentfull afterwords). But the problem was he didn't have an adequate proxy. He's a boys rowing coach at a local high school and was able to get two of his rowers to help. But they only helped for 1.5 hours. We almost got the first truck filled up when they had to go. Craptastic planning on his part, and we got bitten in the ass for it.
But it's done. Moving is like ripping off a band-aid. This one just happened to be big and gnarly, but it's still a finite amount of suck. Beyond that, I'm pretty psyched about our new neighborhood and when I finally get my computer setup in the new place I hope to be inspired to write about it some more.
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