Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Moving

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Sheppard, and Mrs. Mouse is out of town. This episode is Crazy Moving Stories. And look, they're crazy as promised. It makes you never want to move. Please enjoy moving.

All times, come and go.

Good times, take them slow.

My life, I had them both.

But for one thing, you got to know, I'm going to keep on shining. Hi. Is this Hannah?

Yes, it is. Hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you?

Good. Where are you? And what's this cute little miniature door to your left?

Well, I'm currently in upstate New York, in a small town called Hamilton. I'm visiting my parents right now.

Do they have a Shetland pony that lives in there? No.

It's a small door that leads to an attic, but it does look a little creepy, honestly.

Yeah, I'm waiting for a goblin to come out. So you're visiting Mom and Dad. You grew up there?

Yeah, and now I live in New York City.

Okay, so you have a moving story. Does it involve moving to New York City?

No, actually. This story involves moving to Washington, DC. It takes place in the fall of 2016. I had just graduated college the previous spring.

With a degree in what?

In international relations.

Okay. Then the DC makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to be honest, I did not get a job in any international relations-related field. I was living at home, back with my parents, applying to jobs, and my childhood friend, Katie, was also back in our hometown, and she had just started working for a film marketing company. They had another opening. She encouraged me to apply. I got the job. Then by the fall, we both had full-time jobs there, so we decided to relocate to DC, which is where this company was based out of. So, of course, being recent college graduates, we had no money and also very few belongings that we needed to move anyway. So We decided, we'll just move ourselves. We're going to rent a U-Hall van. Katie's dad volunteered to help us move down. So the three of us caravanned down to DC. Katie was driving in front in her car, and then her dad, Gary, was driving the U-Hall van. And then I was falling behind in my pickup truck. So we make our way down to DC. The apartment building we were moving into was actually just outside of DC in Crystal City, Virginia. It was like one of those big apartment buildings where there's a front desk and a gym, a parking garage.

Sounds very upscale.

For a recent college graduate, honestly, it was. It was shocking that we were able to move into this building. So we get down there, and ahead of time, the building had sent us move-in instructions, and they had said, Use the service elevator. It's around back. It's right by the entrance to the parking garage. So Katie Katie's in the lead. We're driving around back, and she didn't see the garage. Again, we're not talking to each other. We're all separately in our cars. Katie thought that the elevator must be in the garage. So she pulls in, and we just followed, which we immediately realized we shouldn't have done that. It was a big mistake because I could immediately see the top of the U-Hall just scraping against the ceiling of the parking garage.

Okay, so the dad didn't have the right clearance.

We did not have clearance. But at this point, it was like we were in too deep. He's basically scraping through the entrance.

He goes all the way.

All the way. Luckily, my truck cleared it just barely, so I was fine. But immediately I knew we screwed up on that.

I'm going to add, if you unload, the U-haul van is going to get lighter and it's going to get even taller.

Great point. We didn't think about that either. I I would say there was very little thinking. It was one of those situations where you knew you had messed up going into it, but then it was too late to back up.

Yeah, you've passed the point of no return.

We pull off to the side and I jump out. Katie and her dad are already out of their cars. They're freaking out. Katie's dad, Gary, was normally a very relaxed, laidback dad. He was the fun dad growing up, had never seen him lose it. He's pacing back and forth, swearing on the top of his his lungs. Just freaking out.

Is his main concern like, Oh, fuck, I got to pay for this thing now? It's going to cost a fortune because I've ruined this van. I'm going to own a U-haul van now?

Yes, this was his exact problem. We open the door and climb up so that we can see the damage. And on the roof, it's a foot long hole.

Oh, it's a gas. She tore it right open.

A piece of metal, either from a pipe or the roof of the garage, had fully grabbed the metal the top of the van and gouged a hole. Katie and her dad are immediately rifling through the truck, trying to find the insurance policy. I'm looking around being like, I don't know how we're going to get out of here because the exit was on the opposite side of the parking garage, and it was an automated entrance and exit with one of those arms that goes up and down. No one's working down there. We're looking around and we noticed that running through this parking garage are very low hanging red pipes, even lower somehow than the entrance to the garage. So we're back in our cars trying to get to the exit. But any route that we take, we run across these red pipes that the van could not have cleared. So once we realized there's no shot, we're getting out the exit, we circle back to the entrance and we're like, this is the only way for us to get out. So we call up at this point to the front desk and we explain we have driven our moving van into the garage and we are completely stuck.

They are not very helpful. They're like, Well, why did you do that? And we're like, yeah, we know.

Because we wanted to have some fun. Yeah, exactly.

We're like, We fully understand that we messed up. I was like, But at this point, there's no way for us to get out the exit. And they're like, No, no, you can't get out the entrance. It's impossible. I'm like, No, really? If you came down here and you saw the situation, we cannot go out the exit. I go and I pull a ticket from the other side. But these These automated machines, the arm does not get activated just by pulling a ticket. It must be a weight thing of a car sitting on it that activates it because me just walking through, it would not activate. It's probably 30 minutes at this point have passed. This whole time, other people have been driving into the garage. So someone comes in and Katie runs up to them and is like, We're trapped. Can you please help us? Can you take a ticket? And then back up really fast We're going to follow you out. So this really nice person did agree. They were like, Okay, we get ourselves all situated. We're facing them. They pulled a ticket and they tried to back up fast, but it just wasn't fast enough.

As soon as the arm sensed them going the opposite direction, it just went back down.

Oh, boy.

A lot of time at this point had passed.

Is dad getting more mad or is he calming down?

I would say Katie's dad was the most panicked I've ever seen him. I was possibly the clearest person. Okay, congrats. Usually, I get really panicked, but he was so panicked that I was like, I have to not be panicking. Katie, at this point, runs up to the front desk and she's like, We need someone to come down and disable this automation so we can get out. She brings someone down. He stared at the situation and he was like, Well, yeah, you shouldn't have driven in here. This garage can only accommodate vehicles under 6 feet, whatever. We're like, Yeah, we know. We understand this is completely our fault. You're not disputing that. But what are we to do now? This van will be trapped forever if we don't come out the entrance. I looked at him and I said, Sir, please. You see the situation. Isn't there any way we can just disable this arm? There has to be something to do here. And he just stared at me for a second. And then without saying anything, he just walked over and just pushed up the arm, manually.

It just went up on its own.

So at that point, I just wanted to cry. Well, I could have done that. I just didn't know I could. And also, why couldn't the front desk have just said to do that? This has been an hour of trapped in the garage for no reason. So we all pull out, finally, escape the garage, re-scraping the crop out of the top of the van, of course, as we go.

You're not going to like this, but I have to say it, I can't really resist. You should have let the air out of the tires.

That's very smart.

I only think of that because I air down in the sand dunes, so I'm pretty familiar with watching the car get smaller. But at any rate, yeah. Now I'm the guy at the front desk.

I didn't think that. No. We finally get out, we get to the third teller. At this point, we've examined the insurance policy. Of course, it says it covers damage to the top except from parking garages. We clearly were not the first people to damage a U-haul from a parking garage. At this point, the vibes are bad because we're thinking we'll have to buy this U-haul van. Then we still, the three of us are lugging all our stuff up to the apartment. It takes hours because it's just the three of us. One person's got to watch the stuff while the other people are doing it. It was Halloween weekend. There's just gaggles of people dressed up and drunk walking on the street, having a great time. I've never been more depressed in my life just watching that and wishing that's where I was instead.

Any Horned Pigface Goblins? Yes. Okay, so Monica's not going to be too intrigued.

I'm here now. Hi, Monica. Hi. Sorry, I came in late.

There's a lot of construction on the street. Horned Pigface Goblins, though. The lead singer of Guar, that's now her style.

Sadly, there were none of those. But we finally get everything in the apartment. He gets up early the next morning, drives all the way back to New York the entire time It poured rain.

Yeah, and now the van's a convertible. Yep.

So not only was there a huge hole in the back, also the back was soaked. So he brings it to U-Hall, and he goes inside, and he's like, Listen, here's what happened. The U-Hall employee just looks at him and is like, So what you're telling me is that a tree branch fell on the car and created this hole?

That was nice. What a savior.

It was like five seconds of silence, and then Gary was like, Yep, that's exactly what happened. You're right. It was a tree branch that fell on the roof of the car.

Or a pipe, whatever it looks like.

So all in all, we didn't have to pay for it. It was like such relief. Thanks to the really kind person at U-Hall who helped us out.

You got to be really grateful that they probably hated working there. They were like, Yeah, I don't mind if I stick it to them. How long did you guys stay there? And then how did you get your shit back to New York?

We stayed there for two years, and then we actually our company got acquired, so we both moved to New York City. That's where the new company was based. And that time we were like, No freaking way are we ever moving ourselves ever again. So we paid professionals. And then, of course, we've just been cursed, both Katie and I, in subsequent moves, because that next move, there was a huge windstorm that caused four hour delays because no So trucks could go over the bridges to Manhattan, and we ended up paying tons of extra money.

The universe is telling you just stay put, I think.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, Hannah, it's so nice to meet you.

It's really nice to meet you. My friend Katie is actually here from the story.

Could she come and say hi? I would love to meet dad as well. I wish he were there. But yes, let's get Katie in here. Hi. Hi, Katie. Do you guys still work together?

No, sadly, not anymore. But we both still live in New York City. Oh, fun. We're just up here for It's a wedding, actually, so it works out really well.

Do you guys eat an Emily burger?

Of course.

All right. Good for you. You know what you're doing. All right. Well, lovely meeting you.

It's so nice meeting both of you.

Okay. Take care. Hello, Michael.

Hi, guys. How are you?

We're wonderful. Where are you, Michael?

I am in Corsica. I'm actually in a hotel room. Hopefully, you guys can hear me okay.

We can. Corsica is an island off of Spain or Italy. What is it?

Close. France, just above in yet.

Okay. Have you gone before or is this a first time? I haven't.

I turned 50 yesterday. Congrats. Happy birthday. We're celebrating.

Thank you. Did a big group join you or is it just you and your partner?

Just me and my partner. Nice, quiet holiday away. I love it here, so it's been really nice.

Okay, you recommend it?

I do, 100%. Crystal clear Mediterranean waters, great food, great wine.

Lovely. So you have a moving story?

I do, yeah. So it was 2012. This was my 14th time in 15 years moving. At this point, we were moving from Santa Barbara to LA. It was finally time for me to actually spend the money to hire movers.

I can't find out that you've moved 14 times in 15 years without having an explanation for that.

A lot of things, just different job opportunities came up or moving within the same job, going to grad school, moving for my wife's job. There's just a lot of things happening and just going with the flow. I was very sad to leave Santa Barbara, I'll say that, but the moving day went They got there early in the morning. They packed everything for us, they put it in the truck, and I was sitting there saying, I can't believe I haven't done this before. It's so easy. Getting the truck off to LA, and we're moving to West Hollywood, and we get to our apartment. Everything's going smoothly. And by about 5: 00 PM, everything's done. They're completely unloaded. I'm upstairs unpacking already. I happened to be unpacking linens. I remember this very clearly. The screen door was open. I I heard a scream, and I was like, Oh, that doesn't sound good. I run out to the balcony to check it out, and I lean over, and I can't really see much, but I can see one of the guys is laying on the ground.

One of the movers?

One of the movers, yeah. His two coworkers are standing over him, and I look a little closer. He's clearly writhing in pain. I can't tell what happened, but there's blood in the ground. So I say, Okay, not good. So I grab a towel, since I'm unpacking the linens, run downstairs to see if I I get outside and the foreman comes over to me and just takes the towel and walks back to his mover. I'm at a distance, can't tell yet what has happened, but there's a lot of blood on the ground and he's clearly been cut pretty badly. I say, Okay, well, there's a hospital right around the corner from where we live. It's a very big, well-known hospital. I won't say what it was called.

Okay, yeah, we could probably guess.

He hops in the car with me and we're on the way to the hospital.

The injured man hops in the car with you.

Yes. So his name is Jose. He hops in the car.

And can you tell where his injury is at?

It's in his hand. Now, I can clearly tell that his hand is wrapped.

But he can talk and stuff.

He can talk, but he doesn't really have any English, and I don't have any Spanish, but He's clearly in pain, just rocking back and forth, making a lot of noise. We get to a red light, and he manages to say, Do you think they can put back? And I said, What back?

Oh, no. I had a fear of this.

I look over and he lifts the towel up, and I just see a bunch of red. I see some white stuff. I don't know what's what. And then he lifts his hand up and his first three fingers are just dangling from the threads of skin.

Oh, my God.

And so they're just hanging, flopping around.

It's a puppet now.

Yes. And I can't even look anymore. I turn, I'm looking the other way out the driver's side window, and I just mumble something like, It's a very good hospital. You'll be fine. We get there, run into the ER. They take a look at his hand right away. I accompany him to the room, and we're sitting there and sitting there. I'm like, Well, this seems weird. It feels pretty urgent to me. Yeah. Sure enough, someone finally comes in. But because this is America, it's not a doctor, it's someone to see if he has insurance. Oh, boy. I can't speak. I'm trying to translate. I tell her what happened, but it's not really helping much. She says, Okay, and she leaves, and then we're waiting. We must have waited a good half an hour. The whole time, he's rocking back and forth, he's moaning. He's in so much pain, and I start to feel very helpless. I go outside and talk to a nurse, and I say, Hey, what's going on? Could we get some help? It feels like a pretty serious injury, at least something for the pain. And she was totally unfaced. She said, Yeah, a doctor will be in when one's free.

So I go back in. Another half hour passes. At this point, I really don't know what to do. So I go back outside and ask again, very nicely, checking in, Can we get someone to come see this man? And she said, I told you before, a doctor will be in when one's available. And so then I start to get upset. I start to lose my patience a bit, raise my voice a bit. I said, That's unacceptable. I need to talk to someone. This man's lost three fingers, at least something for the pain. I see her wave to someone. I look up and a security guard comes over. Oh, my God. The security guard says to me, Sir, you need to calm down. I said, What are you going to do? Take me out of here just because I'm trying to get help for someone in pain? Sure enough, that's what they did.

They did? No.

They escort me out of the emergency room.

Oh, my God.

I'm waiting outside, and now it's been another 10 minutes, and I feel really bad because he's in there himself. I go back up. I bleed my case to the front desk, and I say, Hey, I'm so sorry. Can you let me back in? I just want to be with him. I understand if it takes time. And this is okay. So the security guard comes over, she talks to him. He's like, If you don't make a scene, you can come back in. Five minutes later, a doctor walks in. First thing he does after looking at his hand says, Yes, okay. A nurse comes in, gives him some morphine, and immediately his face just... I can see the relief pour over him. Oh, my God. Now he's in an okay place, and maybe five minutes later, his brother shows up. Now I don't really know what to do, what value I'm adding. So I decided, Okay, this is my time to leave, but I still feel horrible. I'm berating myself. This is my fault. This is what you get when you don't just move yourself. Oh, no.

Sure. Some self-flagellation.

There's an ATM outside by the gift store, so I just take as much money as I can out of that and walk back inside. I hand it to his brother and I leave. I It just felt so awful for this guy because he's not going to be able to work. He doesn't have a hand, probably doesn't have insurance. I called the moving company maybe two weeks later to see how he's doing, and he's okay. He's recovering at home, but that's all they know. The happy ending to this story, I will say, though, is that two years later, we're moving again, of course.

Of course.

Moving to New York City this time. I called the same moving company because aside from that, I had a great experience. Who shows up?

No.

But Jose.

No way.

That's so sweet. Gives me a big hug, shows me his hand. Lots of scars, but fully functional. Wow. Wow.

This is a meet cue in a way.

Did he get his hand in the lift gate of the truck?

Yes, I should have said what happened, but you're exactly right.

Yeah, that's the most obvious. What does that mean? He got caught underneath. Well, the lift gate is hydraulic and they roll the stuff out and then lower it. Well, once they're done And in that, they got to flip it back up. And in the flipping it back up process, you could snip your fingers off.

I guess he wasn't paying attention when his colleague was doing that, and that's exactly what happened.

Oh, my God. So it was his fault, Monica. No. I'm teasing Oh, it's so cute. Fuck. Well, I'm so happy he kept his hands. I mean, I wonder how long your fingers can be dangling off your body without blood before. I feel like it's not a long time. That's why it's shocking they didn't get in there fast. Well, clearly, we an hour and a half, minimally, you can get away with that.

Kudos to the hospital for doing an amazing job on that part of it.

Once you get this service, it's top, top, not service. If you can get it, it's great. Wow. I'm disappointed in that hospital. I like that hospital. That's a bummer.

That was a bummer. I don't know if that's more about the hospital or just the state of American health care.

We could give the most generous benefit of the doubt analysis, which is perhaps he was the only doctor and he was busy doing something else quite critical. But a nurse could come in and give them more. That should have happened. That's what's stupid is if you had called an ambulance, first thing they would have done is give him morphine, and then he would have at least been doped up for the whole ride. Yeah.

In hindsight, that would have been better. It just felt like it was so close.

Yeah, and it's expensive. You should have scored some dope around the corner. There's a couple of places you could have picked up. Some pain killers. Especially back then was a little sketchy. But you did a great thing. You're a nice person. I think you are. The fact that you took it all on yourself and didn't make the form and handle it, rushed them there in a truck.

I'm just glad it had a happy ending.

Well, Michael, it's lovely meeting you. I'm so glad you took time on this fun 50th birthday party trip to talk to us.

It's great to talk to you guys. I was psyched to get that email. Can I bring in my partner? She's a day one.

Would love to meet her.

Yes, of course. Her name is Elizabeth. I'm just going to give her my name.

Yeah, great. Hi, Elizabeth. Oh, my gosh.

What a great addition to our vacation right now.

Oh, good. I didn't know if it was a big inconvenience or if it's fun.

If I could just give a quick shout out to my daughters, Ella and Hannah, because we listen to you guys all the time. We listen to Anonymous constantly in the car.

They're 11 and 13.

Oh, I love it.

They crack up along with us.

They're like the best age. I just want to make sure we actually say their name.

Okay, wonderful. Shout out to them. All right. Well, have fun, you guys. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you.

All right. Bye-bye. Bye. Thanks, guys.

Oh, my God. We're going to talk to Carly with a K. I don't know if I've ever spoken to a Carly with a K. Hello, Carly with a K.

Hi.

Have you met any other Carlies with a K?

I don't think so, but there's many ways to spell it.

Yeah. Yes. Have you ever inquired to your parents why they chose that?

I did, and I think they just preferred the K.

Okay. Do they own a Krispy Kreme? Are you in the South?

We're actually in Canada. I don't think there's even any in my province.

Okay. Yeah, You're the opposite of the south if you're up in Canada.

Does my accent say South?

Not yet. You haven't said a boot, but it'll come out. I don't think we've ever gotten through a Canadian conversation without a boot coming out at some point.

Fair enough. Where are you? I'm in central Canada, and I'm in Saskatchewan, but that's as far as I'm going to tell you.

Okay, great. I like that. I like a mystery. Then do you want me to cut out Carly with a K? Is that too revealing?

No, my name is fine. I'm going to change a couple of details.

Okay, great. I like that. That's very promising. Tell us, you have a moving story.

I do. Okay, this was a little over a decade ago, and I was in college. My now husband and I were engaged, both college students, living in a small one-bedroom condo just near campus. At the time, I was in a two year tech college, so it was quite small. Classes were, I'd say, maybe 30 people in the class. The reason this is relevant is because one day, the instructor of my class, the department head of my program and a man, walk into the classroom. This guy, we're going to call him Kim, he introduces himself as a practicing lawyer and that he would be our law instructor for the next semester. He goes on to tell us that before becoming a lawyer, he actually took this same program and that his heart was really in this program and that he loved everything about it and proceeds to tell us that he's going through a divorce. He has this big, beautiful home with multiple bedrooms and that he wanted to rent out the home for a little while before selling it. He wanted to give back to this program by offering it to the students of the program really inexpensively.

That way We could all live together. I know that sounds off, but it did feel safe in the sense that the department head was there, our instructors were there. Everybody knew each other very intimately. It didn't feel strange.

And there's strength in numbers. You'll be with classmates in theory.

Yeah, and my soon-to-be husband as well. He's like, This is a great opportunity for you. Let me help you. You help me. Kind of thing. About a month later, I got out of my lease for the condo, and my husband and I pack up everything we own, and we move into this house. At the time, it was just myself my fiancé, and then my childhood best friend actually moved in with us.

And was Kim still there?

Kim is not there. It's a completely empty, beautiful home. No red flags. We spend all day moving in. There's no hiccups or anything. I would say we started around noon, and then evening-ish, probably about seven or eight, we send most of our help home. We send the trucks home that are there. My husband goes to clean up things at the old place. So I am then sitting in the home by myself amongst all these boxes, and there is a big knock at the door. I go and I open it, and there is this tall woman standing there who is red-faced, angry, very, very shook. She goes, Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house? Oh, no. The wife.

Was the house totally empty?

Totally empty. Not a single thing in it. I was like, Hi, I'm Carly. I'm renting from Kim. She goes, I'm Kim. And this is my house, and you need to get the fuck out. Wait, what?

Identity from? This is going in a different direction, and I love it.

Turns out that was the ex-wife. They had the exact same name.

Oh, okay.

I had no idea. She is who she says she is, and he says who he says he is.

Okay, that's good. All right, that's better.

Yeah, just a little bit of confusion there. I'm like, holy crap, what am I supposed to do? I've called my parents, I've called my husband, I've called lawyer Kim. I have my husband come back, I have my mom come back. This woman is standing outside and she is shaking. She's so angry. All of the neighbors have come out and are surrounding her. Oh, boy. They're basically corroborating her story that this is her house. It's a really messy divorce. They mentioned to us that he actually lied to her about how old he was before they got married and said he was about 10 years younger than he actually was, that this was probably the third divorce, and just get the hell out right now thing. Cops were called. I'm on the phone with Kim, and Kim says that he is on the way to the lake. He doesn't have enough keys for us, so he has to go get spare keys. This is a few hours away. He's not going to be able to be there. But to not worry because he knows the law, the The cops don't know anything. And I want you to tell the cops that everything's going to be fine.

Actually, you can just tell them that I'll be living in the basement with my teenage son, and you guys are actually just going to be my roommates. What?

How does that make it better also?

I don't know if it's because then he's the owner in the home. Then he goes, Well, okay, what time did you move in? I was like, I think around noon. He goes, Great. I want you to stay until noon tomorrow. Then I'll come and we'll figure it all out. I'm like, Well, the cops are here. He's like, I don't care. It turns out he wanted us to stay for about 24 hours to get some squatters, right? Yeah. I don't know the legalities of that, but he wanted us to stay put. We were like, Well, we need to get the hell out of I don't want to be in between whatever you guys have going on. But we have nowhere to go. Oh, my God. So this is now about 10: 00 at night. It's about November, so it's dark outside. No snow yet, but cold. I called my parents, and they're the heroes of this story. They unloaded their quads out of their quad trailer, cleaned it all out, and we moved our entire house into this quad trailer, and literally packed up and left a few hours later. Wow. We ultimately went and moved in with them for a little while until we could save up for our first home.

So they saved the day.

Whoa. So that was his game plan from the very first speech. Honestly, this is preferred to what I thought was going on. My fear was he had rigged the house up with cameras. Oh, yeah. I thought this was going to be a perverse situation.

I have a little more to tell you.

Oh, wonderful.

It's not going quite that direction. But the next couple of days, I go to my school, my department head, and explain everything that's gone on, how inappropriate. They're very understanding and say, he be rehired. I think, great, it's handled. I get a message back a few days later, and they say, You know what? It's November. He's supposed to be your instructor in January. We can't replace him in time. He's going to be your law instructor for the next four months, and then we will fire him after that.

Oh, my God.

I had to take his law class for the next four months. I didn't learn a single thing about law from him, but he did constantly tell us that even if we didn't like him, if we ever were in trouble, that he would be the first person we would call. And truly, if I ever needed a really scummy lawyer that would do anything to get you out of something, I think he'd probably be my first call. Yeah.

What grade did he give you?

Mid '80s. But I don't think I turned in work. I existed, he existed. There was no conversation past that.

He should have given you an A just for having dealt with that. Yeah, I was nervous he was going to be punitive. You ratted him out. He's getting fired. I'm going to flunk you. The guy's already shown he doesn't have a tremendous amount of morals.

No. And I actually called my mom to find out what her end of the story was. She said that a few years after this, she got a phone call from a girlfriend who had used him as a divorce lawyer, and she didn't have much for cash and was worried about the price of things. He was like, You can just come with me to this party There it is. Yeah. I think pretty low branch.

Oh, boy. I'm comforted a little bit that you have those folks up in Canada, too. I mean, I guess I think that thing's a dime a dozen down here, but I am somewhat relieved that it's universal.

I decided to Google him before this just to see his reviews. There's one that says, We bought a house from this person. We lived in it for a few months in the middle of winter. He called us and said that we had to move out because the house had too many liens on it. I'm pretty sure that's your whole job.

Another one says, If you want theft, corruption, perjury, document falsification, law violations, abuse, extortion, you've come to the right lawyer.

I'm surprised he hasn't been disbarred. So squatters rides only take 24 hours. That is crazy. That's terrifying. What if you had a friend spend the night and they're just like, No, I live here now. I've been here 24 hours. I know.

I don't know what he was going for, how That all works. I didn't learn anything in law.

Yeah, wow. Oh, man. Thank God that your parents had the toy trailer.

It worked out super well. The sim was definitely simming with all of this because I actually hadn't even thought about this man in well over a decade. I exchange services with an esthetician every few weeks, and she had moved into a new facility, and I went to go visit her. Her and I listened to Armchair through these appointments. That's our thing. We always book them on Fridays to try to listen. Oh, fun. I'm walked into her new building and his law office was across the hall. What?

Oh, my God. That is... What?

No. My heart sank. I haven't seen him yet, and I pray I don't. I actually heard the prompt in her office across the hall and wrote my story in outside of his office.

No, you're right. That's impossible. That's impossible. Is it on speaker? When you listen to this one, he might hear it. Oh, let's hope. You guys should put speakers in the hallway.

I hope so. But now when I walk by, I like to snub him a little bit.

Sure. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Oh, Carly, what a bizarre story. I loved it.

Thank you.

Yeah, that was great. Thanks for sharing.

Lots of twists and turns. Thank you so much. All right.

Bye, Carly.

Have a good day, guys. Bye. Here's Steph.

Steph Curry?

Maybe, yeah.

Oh, let's see. Yes, Steph Curry. Hi, Steph. Hi.

How are you? I'm well. So, so nervous.

You have the cuteest haircut. I love it.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Where are you? Physically, I'm in Silicon Valley right now. I live in San Francisco, close by. And that, I guess, opens up my story for you about the move from Toronto to San Francisco. I was born and raised in Toronto, had only ever lived in Toronto. It was a dream of mine and my husband's to move abroad, have an adventure. And we were lucky enough to get an opportunity with my work to be internationally relocated to California. We'd never been to California before, so an interesting thing to just move somewhere you've never visited. Better weather, no Toronto winters, sounded good. It was 2021, so it's still pandemicy. And so part of this international relocation package that I got with work was that they would take care of everything, which is really great. So we had a team that came to our apartment in Toronto, and they packed up everything we owned really carefully and meticulously and loaded the truck for us. And we had some lawyers help us put together all the paperwork that's required because that's very complex.

Also, that's a fucking hell of a drive. That's got to be like 3,000 miles.

You would know better than me, probably.

Well, Detroit is like 2,400, 2,600, and then Toronto. Yeah, so that's a lot.

So the company was going to drive it to our new place in San Francisco. We just had to fly. Day over. We've given notice at our apartment. We sold our cars. Everything we own is on this truck. We're ready to move. And the first hurdle we have to overcome is the airport experience. So interesting to note, the way that you apply for a work visa to go from Canada to the US is you have to apply for the visa at the airport on the day that you're leaving.

That sounds very dicey.

Yes, because if you get denied, you've given up your whole life. I asked multiple times, can I not go to an to see before and do this application in advance to know that I'm approved to move. They said, No, you have to do it at the airport the day that you're flying to San Francisco to move. What? It's wild. I don't understand why it works that way. It's a very emotional experience. It's very stressful. Just making sure all of this is good. They've backfilled my previous job. I've got this new job to look forward to. We've put down three months of security deposit on our new apartment in San Francisco that we've never seen before. Three months of security deposit in San Francisco is probably a year's worth of rent in Toronto. Yes.

It's so expensive there. Yeah, it's so expensive there. Yeah, crazy.

There's so much on the line. We get to the airport about 6 hours early so that we have enough time to do this whole visa application process. But before you can get to the US Customs agents that are there that approve or deny you, you go through security. We've got two cats that we have to move with us. This is another thing I'm really stressed about. One of the cats is elderly and she's docile and fine. Then the younger cat is part feral. He's an outdoor cat. We didn't choose to adopt him. He just showed up one day, and we were slowly integrating him into our family. But he's missing a chunk of his ear. He's really rambunctuous. He scratches a lot. I'm trying to figure out how to get this the cat through security.

You have way too much on your plate. I just got to say.

He can't go through with the carrier. You have to have the cat separate, and then the carrier goes through the X-ray image. What? No.

This is a bad idea. This is a very bad idea. There's a lot of bad ideas at the airport. Yes.

I'm pre-planning how to make this And so I've brought this mesh laundry basket to put the cat into so the carrier can go through, and then we have to switch the cat back and forth. I put an air tag on him so that if he runs away in the airport, maybe we can find him. Who knows what's going to Oh, my God.

My nightmare to have a feral cat running loose in the airport. It's like a Disney movie. Yeah, that's true. An adventure.

I didn't know this was going to happen, but they have this private room by security for these situations. So that was great. I didn't need to use the laundry basket. I think we ditched it somewhere along the way at the airport. So we go into the private room, let the cat out into the room. He's running around, going crazy. They take the carrier out to scan the carrier. They bring it back. It's fine. We're good to go. I have to get him in the carrier, which is really difficult. It scratches the hell out of my arms. At least he's not lost at this point. So we've made it through security with the cats. I'm very relieved. I've been super worried about this leading up to this day. And then we get to the customs area. And so we go up to the agent and we give them the paperwork. It's like three inches of paper in this folder that we got from the lawyers that they have to look through. And then they're going to determine whether we're approved or not. So we wait in the waiting area for an hour and a half with these two cats that are like, yowling.

And you're not allowed to use your cell phones here. You just have to sit really patiently and quietly. And we're watching the agents flip through the pages very slowly, but they're not even looking at them. They're just chatting with each other about how their weekend was. They have some snacks at the area. I guess they flip to the last one. Don't know how much they've read, but they call us up and they say, Okay, you're approved. Go on in. Okay. We're past security. We're approved. Our visas are good. I'm ecstatic. I think we go get a celebratory drink.

I think they just looked at you and they were like, They're white. So let's just go through this. Probably. Let's pretend like we're looking at this. Yeah, but they're white.

Privilege is definitely working in our favor in this scenario. We get to San Francisco. It's 11: 00 PM at this point, get to the car rental place, pick up our car. I am so grateful that neither cat has had an accident by this point because we're 11 hours in to them being in carriers. Oh, No one's peed, no one's done anything because I was braced for having to clean up cat pee on a plane.

Do you give them weed gummies or anything to get them to chill on the flight?

Yes. We did give some to the feral cat, but it wears off pretty quickly. Then they get more scared because now they're no longer on drugs, but they're on the plane.

Should have come off a drug. They're paranoid. Did it ever jump up and down in the crate cause a havoc?

Yes, the whole time. So my husband's behind with the feral line. He's going nuts for the whole flight. He's losing his mind.

He's sitting next to... Oh my God.

I've got the elderly cat, and she's chill. She pokes her little head out once in a while. She's looking around. We can't sit next to each other because they don't allow animals to be next to each other on a flight. We're picking up this rental car. It's taking forever to get the car. We're going to stay in a hotel while our goods are being driven across the continent. Then when they arrive, we can move into the apartment we've secured. We're at the hotel. It's taking forever to check into the hotel. The first thing I All I need to do is create a litter box for the cats because they have been holding it for so long. I had packed in my checked luggage a whole bunch of litter in a box. I opened it up to set this up. They had gone through my luggage, I guess, checking things, and maybe the litter was a flag. They're like, What the heck is in this person's bag? And so they had broken the bag of litter that I had, and it was all over the place.

No. Well, now you can just use your suitcase as the box, the litter box.

True, but Also, everything that I have to live off of for the next four weeks. Oh, my God.

You guys really took it on. She and I hope you like California. Animal parents are really something. Yeah, they're good folks.

We do a lot for these cats. So we set up the litter box. I deal with my luggage at some point later and all of my belongings is covered in this litter. And then we're clocking that this hotel is not great. It's a pet friendly hotel, so it has a stink to it. It's grungey. And we're like, oh, my God, are we going to be able to live here for the next four weeks?

Oh, that long? Oh, my God.

We're trying to make the most of it, but this place is not good. One night we're sleeping and it's three in the morning and I hear a noise and I feel something. I wake up and the elderly cat is in the middle of our bed just peeing in between my husband and I.

Because you have so much litter on your pajamas from them. I didn't even consider that. It's all in the sheets.

We call down to the front desk, we let them know what's happening, and they say, Okay, bring the laundry down. We'll give you some new sheets, but you have to clean this up and deal with it. My husband takes the sheets down. They take them into the backstab area. He has to put them into the commercial washing machine because they refuse to touch it. It's fine. A little weird. Then we get the new sheets, and then it's up to us to clean and make our bed. I'm already like, What has previously happened on this mattress that other people did or did not clean? We flip it and put the new sheets on. At this point, I'm like, We can't stay here. The cats are unhappy. It's too small of a space for them. So I call my boss and I let her know what's going on, and she's like, Okay, I get it. We'll help you out. So they order rental furniture for us and they put it into the apartment that we've secured. Oh, great. Yeah. Perfect. So we're so happy. We do that for a few weeks. And then it's the day that our stuff is supposed to come.

The rental furniture company comes in the morning to take all of the furniture out right before the delivery company comes with all of our own belongings. The company that's going to move us in is supposed to unpack the truck, unpack every single box, put everything away for us, rebuild our furniture that they disassembled in Toronto. The whole nine yards is done in this one day. And they're supposed to come at 9: 00 AM. I'm so excited. I can't just wait to be situated and be in my home and have my own bedsheets and all the things that I've missed. I've been through the most stressful time of my life, international move. I'm starting a new job. I'm meeting all these new people. It's still the pandemic.

Getting pissed on at 9: 00. Yeah, this is a lot.

There's It's supposed to come at 9: 00. They don't show up at 9: 00. It's 10: 00. It's 11: 00. They come just before lunchtime. And I'm like, already, you're not going to get this work done. You have so much to do in a single day. You're three hours late. And then these two guys get out of the truck. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's only two people. How do you think this is going to work? We also have in San Francisco a lot of hills and stairs up to apartments. So we have these massive flight of stairs to get to our front door. Just doing that alone, bringing the stuff up these stairs is going to kill these guys. I just have to trust the process, though. They've been hired to do this job. They understand the scope. They got to do it. So there's this younger guy and this older guy. And the older guy seems like he's in charge, but it's not super clear. And my husband and I clock that his fingers are super dirty. It looks like he's been working on his truck in some capacity, black and greasy.

So they start to unload. And I'm like, Do you guys have enough help to get this done? They're like, Oh, someone else is coming to help us. There's a third guy who's coming. He shows up, I guess, mid-afternoon. They're going at it, but there's no process here. There's no one set to do certain jobs, no game plan at all. It's like they've never moved anyone ever before. They're randomly doing a couple of boxes, half unpacking something. Nothing's going into the proper room, no furniture rebuilding is being done. So where are you going to put all the items that you're unpacking without the furniture in place? So my husband says to the older guy, Hey, maybe could you start building the bed? We need a place to sleep tonight. He's like, Okay, yeah. Has a really hard time with it. A whole bunch of esthetic damage is done. There's a big scratch across the headboard. The screws are stripped. Somehow he puts it together. I don't know how stable it's going to be. And then he tries to do the wardrobe, totally destroys the wardrobe. Unusable.

Oh, my God.

Absolutely garbage.

Then also, I'm noticing that these black, sticky fingerprints are on every single item that we own. My bed frame is covered in these black fingerprints. I noticed the other two guys, the younger guys, I also have these black fingerprints on everything. I guess there's some newspaper that's been used to pack things, but no one's washing their hands. They're just touching everything. I think I cleaned off all my items for the following weeks. I would find them on stuff. It's really stressing me out. Then I go to the washroom and I notice there's urine all across the toilet seat. I'm like, Well, that's pretty gross, but okay.

Could have been your cat. She's got a bad track record.

But I look over and not only is it on the toilet seat, there's a full puddle on the floor next to the toilet of urine.

Okay, so it was the older guy. That's a very older guy move. It is. Maybe that one was the cat at least on the floor. Yeah, there's piss everywhere.

So I clean it up. I don't want to address it with them in the middle of this workday. That feels awkward. So I'm silently angry that now someone has peed on my floor. We keep going. And then I'm in the kitchen. My husband's in the kitchen. People are in the kitchen. I hear a clicking noise, and I don't know what that is. And then I turn around, and my husband is running from the stove to the sink with something that's on fire. I quickly realized that they have laid out the inventory paperwork on top of the gas stove.

Which has pilot lights lit.

. So someone leaned on the hob in front of the stove and lit the paperwork on fire. My husband's put it out, but now there's also melted plastic all over our stove because it was in plastic heating. I'm like, This is wild. My husband says to the older guy, Hey, your friend here just lit the paperwork on fire. And the older guy doesn't care. He's like, Oh, yeah, right. And walks away. You can see the smoke in here. What do you mean, yeah, right? So I've had enough. I'm freaking out. I call my boss. I'm like, I can't do this. I don't know what to do. All of these things are going wrong. I can't handle this. And she's like, Just tell them to leave stuff. And I'm like, Oh, that's a good idea. And she's like, We'll figure something else out. We'll get another team in there to help you with all the things. Just tell them to I try to find a way to say this, but I'm so emotional.

You're so Canadian. I'm like, I'm easy.

I want to be polite, but I'm so out of 10. I'm so stressed. I want to cry and scream at the same time. I'm like, It's too much. So eventually, I'd find the words to be like, Okay, you guys need to go. And they don't understand why I'm asking. You've helped enough. They just look at me like, I'm crazy.

But we're not done yet. Yeah.

Please just take everything out of the boxes. I want you to remove all the cardboard boxes because I don't want to deal with that. And then just go. We got it from here. That's it. So they just start dumping everything out of the boxes onto the floor and take all the cardboard boxes. This takes them a couple more hours. Oh, my God.

This is as bad as it can go. How much was this service? Yeah, it's probably a fortune. It's so expensive. Drive across the continent.

It's dark when they finally leave, and our stuff is just in piles on the floor surrounding us. My husband didn't have a work permit, so he had a little bit of time in the coming days to build the furniture and put all the items back and everything. But it was a wild and stressful experience.

Was there any refunding that happened?

This is a good question. Yes. I was able to tell my company what they had damaged. My wardrobe was broken. They bought us a new one and charged it back to the moving company. Is this Google?

This is a good company. Yeah, she's in Silicon Valley. You're in that area. It's Air I like this. You deserve that.

I actually don't work in tech. I work in retail, and it's very unique that I got an offer like this.

Oh, cool. Well, good. I think you deserve it. I was thinking seven different times, I would love to hire you. You're so meticulous and so forward-thinking and so prepared. You have high standards. You're not like those movers.

I appreciate that. I think my husband would agree with those sentiments. I'm a meticulous person.

Now, the way I sometimes get through situations similar to that one is I have to go, Well, fuck, I don't want that job. That's the only way I can get through when I'm seeing abject incompetence and a lack of giving a fuck, I go like, Yeah, if I was changing oil here, too, I might feel the same way. When you paid, it's hard. Yeah, but someone got the $15,000, and these guys got 200 bucks. Yeah, that's true. What a delight, Steph. You like California.

It's been an experience of a lifetime. It's so interesting here. It's beautiful. It's very different than Toronto. It has made me appreciate Toronto in a lot of ways that I was taking for granted while I lived there. But San Francisco is amazing. I have incredible friends there. If I can shout out Beach, Adrienne, Katie, and my podcast club. They are wonderful people.

You're in a podcast club? Yes.

It's like a book club, but it's based on a podcast. It was a health and wellness podcast, but a bunch of us are armcherries, and so it has slowly turned into a lot of talk about armcherries.

We are so flattered to have infiltrated a health and wellness podcast club. Yeah. Well, delightful meeting you, Steph. We're thrilled to have you here.

It's been amazing to meet you both. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care. That visa thing is... Well, I will say in our defense, I've had to do that to go to Canada to work. And it's very similar. They let you land there, but you can't leave the airport. And so the day I went there to work on a movie, it was also the day all the visa students were arriving from around the world. It was absolutely nuts. I was there for a day trying to get this fucking work permit. At one point, I'm just going to say I'm not working. Why? It's so easy. I'm just going to go in. I'm just here on a vacancy. I'm here to fucking sightsee. Yeah, exactly. Deal with it. Oh, poor Steph. I mean, look, I respect it so much, but man, just let that feral cat just be feral in the world. It's fun. We're having comparable thoughts. Mine is like, just buy new shit when you get there. Moving costs. I'm sure that was at least 15 grand. Just go buy some furniture. I know, but also your sentimental- Your sentimental things. Yeah, FedEx those. All right. Love you. All right.

Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song?

Oh. Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and we With the help of Armchairs, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rhymeish, on the fly, I rindish. Enjoy. Follow Armchairs Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wndri. Com/survey.