You. Will. Be. MOVED.

The most consistent freelance job of my New York years has been mover...though technically, it hasn't even been all freelance. I've been a member of a small moves company for six years. Moving Forces! Inc! I started out freelance, but one day i answered a "looking for movers" ad. It is a measure of how much i enjoy this company that, when we switched from casual wear to uniforms a few years ago, i (non-conformist in the very fibers of my DNA) didn't bolt.
Working small moves is perfect for my personality. You're helping others. You can take or refuse jobs at your discretion. Most are less than four hours. Constant exposure to new people and new environments. You can drop out of your mind almost entirely, to do work that negates the need for any other "exercise". Many jobs are easy, some are wonderfully brutal. Moving Forces services all five boroughs, plus parts of Jersey and very occasionally Long Island and Westchester.
A "small move" is one in which the client provides the vehicle (usually a rented truck), and hires extra hands for the loading or unloading (or both). Two movers is common, though i've been on crews of 1-5. For the past couple years, partly because of knees with recovering repetitive stress injuries, i've usually been the truck loader. Often i'd rather not be bothered with that...just give me heavy shit to carry...but i'm excellent at loading, and it does have a zen quality. It's reminiscent of the video game Tetris (which i've never played, but the number of times i've seen it played must mean it holds some kind of gaming record). Taking up every available cm of space, keeping heavier pieces low, protecting fragile pieces, and building in such a way as to avoid shifting or toppling, is a challenge. I consider the need for ropes a sign of someone who probably could have done better. There have been very few times when we weren't able to fit everything in the truck, even when the client should have rented the next size up.
I stand out a bit from other movers in eagerness and physical ability. I've never seen another mover go back up stairs for a new load as strongly as i, almost never slowing down to just one step at a time. The cameraderie with the other movers is great. Frequent chatter or singing or such. Our rare disagreements are generally good-natured, like the never-ending "chain/stage" debate. Our boss's favorite outburst has always been "Chain!", said with equal parts gung-ho and playfulness. "Chaining" is having a constant link of movers between apartment and truck, with one mover passing a load off to the next, and so on. But at a certain point over the past couple years, some movers (including, bizarrely, the boss) began to do staging instead of chaining...while still calling out "chain!" Staging is setting your load down at an arranged spot, for the next person in the link to pick up and carry on. I rail no end against staging, as its relative inefficiency is indisputable (not that some don't try, of course). What expends more energy - bending over to set something down, requiring someone to bend over and lift it back up, or passing a load directly to the next mover? It's a no-brainer. Staging can also cause gaps in communication, as the needs of the truck are relayed back to the apartment. When pushed to defend staging, the best my companions can come up with is shaky logic or a feeble appeal to emotionalism ("It's psychologically tougher having to sometimes carry the load an extra flight or two"). Any disparities in chaining even out over the course of a move - if you have a longer trudge, your next haul will automatically be shorter. But for some bizarre reason, several of my teammates are stuck on staging.
The clients are almost always wonderful, though a mixed bag in terms of preparedness. Some are still bagging and boxing as the truck fills up.
My favorite technique? The turtle - taking a heavy object (chair, coffee table, wardrobe box with handles) onto your head or back. The pancake is also fun - flopping a mattress over the railing of a stairwell while your partner moves ahead to catch it.
After six years, i have company seniority, aside from the boss. There are only five or six on the roster at any time. Many have been creative types (musicians, actors...). Moving Forces switched from a flag logo to camouflage a few years back, which i thought was ill-conceived, considering where we ply our trade. Patriotism resonates in NY. Militarism resonates in...Oklahoma? Our uniforms are black T-shirts with camo pants. The shirts bear our logo and the slogan "You Will Recommend Us".  Our reviews have borne this out - we've historically gotten the majority of our business from U-Haul's website, where we've constantly ranked at or near the top of their affiliated company rankings. I've thought of alternate slogans - "We Will Move You", "A Moving Experience", or "You Will Be Moved", but the boss is happy with the old one.
As for the boss, Robin, well...he's quite a bird. It all flows from him, and it's all pretty damned good, and he's quite a bird. A bizarre mix of german/brazilian heritage, he's got aryan structure and militarism - his original idea for the uniforms was fatigues, with medals for rank and distinguished service (we talked him out of that one). He adds to that a brazilian esoteric silliness...ducky stickers on paychecks, for example. He has heightened geopolitical awareness and an eager, offbeat sense of humor. He asks us to call the moves "trainings". He joins in many trainings himself.
New York moves sometimes involve elevators, but buildings lower than six floors aren't required to have one. You understand what i'm saying?
Fortunately i love heat...some of the summer moves involve stairwells where the temperature is over a hundred. Many movers bring a spare T-shirt (one guy even brings several), but i bring only one, mostly because i sweat less quickly and copiously than most.
The money's nice. After one raise, i make $17/hr. Tips are almost always involved, often $20 or more. My lowest-paying move was the day a fancy bed footboard tipped over, cracked, and my partner and i found ourselves with a $500 bill. My highest-paying day was a sixteen-hour move to the suburbs for a sweet musician named Duke, and his wife. $450.
The heaviest thing i ever moved was a first-edition widescreen TV. It weighed the better part of five hundred pounds. There were four of us, and we had to get it from the 5th floor to the street, with no elevator. We couldn't lift it steadily until we set it on two blankets and grasped the four corners. Even with that, we could only go one step at a time. LIFT! Bump. LIFT! Bump. LIFT...
My funniest moment involved a day my partner John and i were, for no particular reason, riffing on the old GET SMART. We were taking a huge, wobbly Ikea wardrobe down one flight and to the trash. I had the lower end. I'm about five steps down, sort of underneath it, when a whooshing sensation envelops me. When i open my eyes, the entire enormous swedish behemoth has imploded, myriad pieces of it trickling around my ankles. How i didn't get bowled over or otherwise concussed, i'll never understand. With unassailable comedic timing, i looked at John and, in my best Don Adams, said "Missed me by THAT much."
I hold the company record for the highest distance (forty-one stories) any mover has ever dropped an object. We were moving a client into a high-rise, and had a full load in the elevator. When the doors opened on the 41st floor, i picked up two armloads, then suddenly realized my partner needed help steadying something he was pulling down. I set down the load in one of my hands - right on the crack between elevator and floor. One of the things in that load was a small, unpainted wooden shelf. It silently sliced through the opening, and was gone. We never heard a crash.
Our most immortally-named client? Israel Sockeye.
Alas, the end of Moving Forces (www.movingforces.us) may be at hand. For some reason we'll perhaps never understand, U-Haul has dismissed us from their site, taking away 80% of our business. The reason they gave is that they only want to work with companies which don't have their own truck. Which we don't - the closest we ever came to having one was an affiliation with a fun fellow named Curtis, who had a big yellow truck. He bumped parked cars and fire hydrants with head-scratching regularity. We only dealt with him for a few months, four or five years ago. When i learned we were removed from the site, the only thought that made sense was that one of our rival companies had lined the wallet of someone at U-Haul corporate. We've applied to be reinstated, but U-Haul reserves the right to do whatever the hell they want (and charge us a hefty fee if they do reinstate us). A shame. I can't imagine that any NY company made clients as happy (or made U-Haul look as good) as we have the past few years. We're personable, quirky, talented, and dedicated. But the nature of this business is that the majority of your clients will never give you repeat business, no matter how thrilled they are. We'll wait a second while everyone catches up to the people who've already figured out why that is.
The most apt way i can tell you about my time as a NY mover, is to devote a moment to each of the most memorable movers i've worked with. This is also, i hope, a fitting memorial to one of NY's most unique moving companies ever.
ROBIN
Tall with large feet that sometimes flop in your way, he sets a fine example of moving talent. He never wants us to let on to the client that he's the boss. Trainings with him are peppered with his repeated exclamations of "Amaaaaazing" and "Chain!" It's easy to get him singing by humming a line to some obscure 80s pop song. He has an extreme macrobiotic diet, which is perhaps as much myth as reality (one legend being that he subsists entirely on orange juice). As he never eats added sugars, he never brushes his teeth. Add to that his habit of carrying garlic bulbs in his pocket, to pop in his mouth at random moments, and you have a formula for frequently-funky breath. He also eschews deodorants and such, so his musk is purty strong. But he's a delight to work with, every single time.
MIKE
I probably logged more minutes with Mike than any other mover. A sweet soul. He and i were the company's only bikers for a long time, and it was always fun comparing how far we'd traveled on any given day. An easygoing musician with an eager outlook, very comfortable in rapport with clients. He and his wife Sandy (and two dogs) took me in once for a month when i was between homes. Our last move together was moving him to the suburbs. He makes it back into the city on occasion, and is very much missed.
GREG
Moving Forces most regular mover over the past year or so, given my other conflicts. Thoroughly professional, thoroughtly competent, and thoroughly a pleasure. A singer/songwriter, his band, Greg Smith and the Broken English (http://www.gregsmithandthebrokenenglish.com/), won an IMA award last year. He's sort of a cross between Dylan, Tom Waits, and Davey Jones. He establishes rapport with clients easily. I love his music, and he's becoming a friend outside work.
IVAN
A gregarious croatian with heavy accent and a penchant for wordplay, he lived with Robin for a year or more before returning to Croatia. A good mover. He's a charismatic figure in new age spiritualism. I helped edit/translate one of his books, and he founded a school in NYC. I became friends with his ex-wife as well, and he invited me to become his traveling companion/editor, but i get suspicious any time the phrase "school of thought" comes up, and didn't want to risk making my own creative visions ancillary to anyone's.
JOHN
A freelance editor who spent a few years with us before taking a full-time position with a publishing company. Easygoing, keen of wit, and a right fine mover. He grumbled about physical labor as time wore on, which made me sad. We vowed to never see the film THE ROAD, as the book was so sublime. I hoped we might become better friends, and he did invite me to stay with him once when i was between homes, but he drifted away into his new life.
DAVE
My biological sibling, i brought him into Moving Forces when the Tavern on the Green, his fourteen-year employer, closed. He spent a year with us, until he became a doorman at the Trump Soho. As eager a mover as you could ever want, he loves to bring up little details of jobs we did months earlier, details which i've usually forgotten. His unfamilarity with the work and a bout with Lyme disease made him a bit slow and weak at first, but he shaped up nicely. I suspect we'll be sharing Moving Forces in-jokes decades from now. He still longs to do moves on his rare days off.
R.J.
A jazz trumpeter. Great company, fun and friendly, he also did volunteer work teaching kids music. He had the habit of scanning sidewalks for cigarettes that hadn't been fully smoked, and finishing them off. He disappeared off the face of the Earth, in a way that felt faintly ominous.
SINBAD
A testament to the in and out nature of freelance work, he was a great, smiling presence on many jobs, then disappeared when his gigs in the music world took off. A couple years later, he happily re-appeared.
JOE
A big, bearded fellow, very low-key. I took a shine to him, partly because he reminded me of a fuzzy-headed G.I. Joe i'd had as a child. I wanted to become friends with him outside work, and it almost happened.
JARED
He makes you want to find the people who raised him, just to say thank you.
SCOTT
Very outgoing and enthusiastic, but i eventually became disenchanted with him, and told Robin i thought he was making our company look bad. His strengths were negated by a general ungentleness, which manifested in dropping boxes instead of setting them down, and suggesting we attempt to "force" an expensive piece of furniture through a doorway it wasn't fitting through. The only mover i ever heard bark at a client. I lost good money because of him on at least one occasion.
STEVE
One of the most talented movers i ever beheld, he could handle enormous pieces of furniture alone like no one else...but acted as though he was in charge of every move he worked. I had more patience for him than most of my companions, but eventually his act wearied me too.
HOSHI GLUTESTRONG
Sadly, i'm kidding. We've never had a female mover, though i've kept egging Robin to hire one. He's interviewed several, and says none have gotten past the question, "Can you carry half a sleeper sofa up five flights?" Sigh. I've seen what Olympic women look like three or four decades after Title IX, so i refuse to give up hope.
GUNTHER
A gnarly acid jazz drummer from Germany, i think he ended up in jail for some bogus "consensual crime" charge.
UKE
The most imposingly statuesque mover i ever knew, he was 6'5" with arms the size of my legs. Unimpeachably agreeable. The only mover who had larger feet than Robin, he had to walk down stairs diagonally, otherwise he would slip off. I was sad when he left the company to go raise christian babies. That sentence can be interpreted two ways, and either would be correct.
FELIX
It took me about three seconds to be perplexed as to how or why Robin hired this guy. He was an ex-convict, which is perfectly fine, but he didn't have the kind of personality that puts people at ease. A pronounced lack of gentleness. I think perhaps Robin has a fascination for redemption...but his instincts failed him this time. During moves, Felix was sometimes on the phone conducting semi-shady business deals. I told Robin we were going to lose our high company ranking, and we were going to deserve it.
COOL BREEZE
I don't remember much about him, but how can i not mention someone named "Cool Breeze"?
AL
My first partner ever, Al was as great a comrade as you could ever want. He was funny, he was strong, and he played well with others. I nicknamed him "Lovin' Al", after the James Taylor song. He had been through any number of personal crucibles, with time spent in the army, jail, and a husband/father phase that sounded none too pleasant. He had put that all behind him, to live a life of enormous simplicity. I've never quite gotten over the fact that our company lost him when we moved "on the books", with tax forms and such.
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Moving Forces. Wonderful times.