Finally, after many months of effort, we were down to our last two pieces of antique furniture, a wardrobe and a sideboard from our time in the Czech Republic. As luck would have it, they were also the two biggest.
The prices we’d set were heartbreakingly low for us, but South Florida is not the place for the types of antiques we had, and the antique furniture market in general was way down, never mind how depressed the local economy has been.
We became resigned to keeping the two remaining pieces, and began looking at storage places big enough to accommodate them. Then came an email from our Craigslist posting about the wardrobe. The woman who wrote was another one of those now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t kinds of folks. She’d write and set a date, then not show. Then she’d call and set a time and not confirm.
After several days or a week of this, she actually showed up at our house, her boyfriend in tow, wanting assurances that we could transport the wardrobe for her. We quickly called our neighbor Ivar, a twenty-year veteran of his own small moving business. He agreed to move it.
Have you ever had an uncomfortable feeling immediately when you meet someone? This was one of those times. This woman, we’ll call her Attila, walked into our house, just barely greeting us politely. Then ignoring us, she walked over to the wardrobe and irritably and dismissively started listing its blemishes, which we’d already clearly disclosed in photos in the posting. Chelsea and I chatted with her boyfriend while she hemmed and hawed.
She asked if we’d take less, we told her no, it was already at rock bottom. For crying out loud, it was posted at one-hundred-fifty and it should have been closer to four hundred! With a great show of drama, and despite her boyfriend’s comments that her refinishing guy could handle the things easily, she swept regally out the front door, saying she wouldn’t take it, it just wasn’t right.
Chelsea and I just looked at each other and shrugged and said, oh well, better luck next time. Three minutes later Attila was on the phone, telling us she was back outside our house and would take the wardrobe after all.
Oh if only we had known! We would have locked the door and not let her inside.
The next hour and half seemed like four hours. Apparently Attila is an antique bargain hunter, using a particular refinisher so often he’s nearly on her personal staff. Among other projects, she had already found and refinished a table and set of chairs. Our wardrobe, once refinished, would be a perfect match.
Having done this before, she was very particular about what she wanted, but was not prepared. She came armed with tape, but not enough; blankets, but not enough. She had absolutely no patience for the perceived failings of others, nor did she communicate her wants.
I offered tape. She used an entire roll of our best tape. I offered blankets, cardboard, whatever she needed. She used them without a thank you. She got increasingly upset and demanding, snapping at her boyfriend, and just barely restraining herself from snapping at us as she wound this wardrobe up and up and up in tape and cardboard and blankets.
It was truly astonishing, watching her wind herself up at the same time and watching all of us jumping to her every command.
Then came time to move it. By this time we were long past the time agreed with Ivar, so he was gone. Bless his heart though, he showed up within twenty minutes, but Attila was still winding herself up. First she had a heart attack about the method of moving it. After quite some time we all got her calmed down and started moving it.
Meanwhile Attila told me she wanted to pay only a hundred dollars and handed a hundred dollar bill to me. I told her no, that I was insisting on the full amount. She finally went out to the car to get her purse to pay me the balance.
Now, I know that it’s possible to bend spoons with your mind, and that it’s possible to walk down I-95 without getting hit, but I also know I can’t do those things, at least not now. I also know that I should never, never put my hand between a large piece of furniture and the dolly it’s sitting on, while it’s being moved.
But so help me, that’s exactly what Attila did on her way back to pay me. She got herself so stressed about the way the guys were moving it (they were having no problems at all, except for her), that she shrieked and shoved her hand under the wardrobe.
Who knows what she intended? All she succeeded in doing was smashing her thumb rather badly.
You can imagine the rest. Drama, shrieking that subsided to hissing, ice packs, dramatic whirls in and out as she threw orders at the guys…it was quite a performance. Meanwhile, the rest of us were utterly frazzled. Ivar took me aside for a moment in the house and said with masterful understatement, “She’s really not a very good kind of customer, is she?”
At long last the wardrobe was securely on the van, ready to roll. That’s when I discovered that she wanted Chelsea and me to ride down with them and unload at the other end, a forty-five minute ride one way! I finally put my foot down and said no. She responded with letting me know that she wasn’t going to take the wardrobe.
I was over the edge, and knew that if I said one more word it wouldn’t be pretty. I walked into the house, practicing my deep breathing. The upshot was that Ivar agreed to move it for forty dollars, way under the going rate. He took off with her in the front of the van with him, returning an hour and half later. I never did get my last fifty dollars.
I stewed over the whole thing for two days before I calmed down and realized what had happened. In retrospect, it was really astonishing that each one of us had allowed Attila to run roughshod over us with her hobnailed boots.
I will wager on the bible, on my mother’s grave, on anything you can bring up, that I have more moving experience than Attila has. Yes, including heavy antique pieces. When I saw her start to fall apart, I needed to have stepped in and told her that her behavior was unacceptable, and asked her what her goals were, specifically.
Not only do I have extensive moving experience, I am also extremely skilled at big projects and at accomplishing goals. I should have done the job the way I know it needed to be done, and asked her to wait in the car. If she didn’t approve of the way it was done, she didn’t have to take the piece.
We all would have had fun doing it, and we would have accomplished the job with no stress and no injuries, in a fraction of the time.
Truthfully, I was angry with myself for having allowed the situation to develop. It’s one thing for someone else to behave poorly, but it’s another thing for me to allow it on my time. I resolved then and there that I would, from now on, be aware when something negative is developing, and take steps immediately to divert the energy towards a pleasing outcome.
Since we’re headed out for many years on the road, facing many different experiences and cultures, this is a valuable lesson to have under my belt.
No more buckling under to intimidation tactics and tantrums. No more Attila the Huns in my life.