Below is a letter I wrote reporting what happened when Presbyterian Medical Services paid for movers for me, (or was it really for the Buyer at Auction: the empty the house for the buyer). Presbyterian has been furious that I complained and refused to help me get the housing I was supposed to get weeks ago, having “won a lottery.”
Please read my letter and see if it provides a good reason to complain.
Karen Kline
Room 122
Motel 6 Cerrillos Road South
3695 Cerrillos Rd.
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
May 18, 2019
Mobile Crisis Team
Santa Fe Community Guidance
2960 Rodeo Park Dr. W
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Re: Movers
Dear Kate, Michael, and Sonya,
Whew. Thank you for your help moving my things.
By way of context, when Motel 6’s front desk told me I had to get rid of my plants, one twitter friend gave me especially effective suggestions. Turns out the person does some kind of social work. When I said it upset me that PMS chose to pay a company to move my things when it would have been less to pay my friend Joe, the Twitter person said companies carry insurance and are bonded, whereas if Joe got hurt he could sue PMS out of existence. I saw the point and asked, why not say that right away? Why wait two days to say, “We can’t pay Joe.”
The Twitter person said they’d had three bosses in two and a half years, and turnover among field workers was high because of burn out; as burn out sets in, short answers replace explanations. I said I feel a bit bad about how critical I’ve been.
And, I do feel a bit bad.
Still, there were some problems with moving that I need to talk about:
It would have been good if I’d been there from the beginning. That would have saved an hour, maybe two. By the time I arrived the movers were moving things I didn’t want, and resisted moving things I did want. It was difficult. I kept asking for certain things to be moved, and I’d find them in another room, not moved to the truck.
It was disturbing that the movers had gone through my things. Whoever opened up the house for the movers without me there should have acted on my behalf to safeguard my things. One thing I wanted was my social security card, but the places I meant to look were all disturbed. I couldn’t figure out where it might be.
A big problem from not being there for the first hour is that things were moved into pathways and left there. With my walker I can’t get around blockages like that.
Bags of things in the doorway to my closet made it impossible for me to roll my walker into the opening. Moving the heavy bags while holding on to my walker was difficult. I finally got close enough to my hanging organizers to get things out, but I don’t know if all the organizers were packed, and I didn’t get close enough to get the memory foam I need here at Motel 6 because the bed springs are pretty much causing bed sores. If I was healthier I could walk around more, and it would be less of a problem.
Similarly, things impeded my way to storage cubes against the bedroom wall. I wanted summer tops from them, but I don’t know if the fellow who began emptying some of the cubes ever got to the cube with the tops.
I didn’t know he was deaf. I thought he didn’t understand English so I was using my limited Spanish that works with housekeepers here at Motel 6. It would have been more efficient for him to be moving heavy items to the truck, rather than helping me with specific things that required some amount of communication. He was really nice and I liked him. I just couldn’t figure out how to learn from him if he emptied all the cubes, and I couldn’t get to them to check because of the things on the floor.
I wanted a box of LED lights, but I don’t think he moved it to the truck. I don’t know if my Elna sewing machine, which is lunchbox sized, got moved to the truck.
It was nice for Michael and Sonia to use the time to chat on the deck. I think it was a well deserved break from dealing with clients, and I understand that they couldn’t put things in bags or move anything, but it would have been helpful if one of them had helped me direct the movers. For the nearly $700 it cost, the work could have better fulfilled its aim. So many things I need weren’t moved and there’s a lot of empty space in the 10×10 storage unit.
At the end, when we were leaving A1 Storage, Pat, the head mover, came to my side of the car and said I shouldn’t be mean. Why did he say that?
I had given my $300+ massage chair to Ed, one of the movers, I didn’t complain when Ed took my car battery jump starter which I used as a backup battery on cloudy days when my large solar system wasn’t charging. When I asked Ed where it was he said I’d given it to him, but in fact I hadn’t said anything like that.
I didn’t complain when Pat was looking in drawers instead of helping me with things I needed. I kept on trying to get boxes moved to the truck, over and over again, but I was ignored… Then, Pat said I’m a mean person… ??? I’d given him a rather costly film type camera that he asked about.
How was it that Pat came to say I was a mean person? Where did he get that idea???
Is this a “mean” letter? Is it mean to want the things I’ll need going forward, assuming I’m not living/dying on the street… Maybe Sonia thought it was mean of me to be critical of Eric for not organizing things for the time he had said on the day I needed my birth certificate. Is that what she took my cell phone off speaker to talk about?
I well know the temptation to discuss people we’re dealing with behind their backs. It’s one thing to vent frustration, it’s another to sabotage the person going forward.
Sigh.
I asked for two of my chrome carts to be disassembled for moving, and I thought the deaf fellow understood because he made a gesture that indicated taking them apart, but that never happened.
When I wanted my rolling chair from the kitchen, which allows me to do things which I cannot do standing, the chair appeared all different places in “my” home, without getting carried out to the truck. I wanted very few things out of all there was, but I had an enormously difficult time getting them, and many were not ever moved.
I didn’t get my court case files which I’ll need going forward with my appeal and Independent Action. That’s disastrous. There was so much confusion I didn’t get back to the room where they were in order to keep insisting, so I’m sure they weren’t moved.
I wanted my washer and the table it sits on. But though I asked 3 times, it wasn’t moved.
It was so chaotic when I arrived that a part of all my thinking, which is impaired by brain injury, had to go to seeing through the chaos, seeing to how things would have been before everything was displaced. In their original places I would have more easily seen what I wanted/needed to take.
My silversmithing hammers that were on a shelf in the pantry weren’t there when I wanted them. My little device to recharge rechargeable batteries wasn’t on the cart next to my narrow bed when I went to get it. My packing tape and shoes, which somehow didn’t get moved on the day of the eviction, were not on my narrow bed, because the mattresses had been moved, though the frame remained and the quilt I’d wanted to take to Motel 6 so I could wash it, was somewhere in the living room, as were the linens and back rest pillow. If I had been there from the beginning I’d have had them put into black bags and moved as a priority. Sadness.
Throw pillows that could come in handy were all over the place. It would have been easy to put them in a black bag, but someone would have had to get the movers to not be standing by their truck chatting, instead of helping. I’m not mobile enough to keep going to the door and calling them in, and then remembering what I wanted them for. It was just extremely chaotic.
I’d arranged for the City to give me the black bags, which they ordinarily don’t do. They provided them to me because I was still paying city trash collection and water. I was originally going to take out a lot of things to be thrown away, to save Eric the bother. But then that Saturday of moving got cancelled.
It makes me sad that all the thought I put into what I needed and what would fit in a 10×10 storage space was mostly wasted. Yet the cost was two to three times higher than I could have imagined, nearly $700.
I think Eric was able to see that the situation wasn’t ideal. He suggested that maybe I can get back in, but he wasn’t sure. Eric moved several things for me, two of which he asked me about, rather than me asking him to help.
If only PMS people had been as eager to help. It’s surprising to me that on the way to “my” house when I told Sonya that my right arm was giving me problems and painful, she suggested going to the ER, but then at the house she didn’t try to help me with things I couldn’t lift, like the bags that kept me from being able to get to things.
I wanted a few things from the walk in closet. The movers had tipped the insulation in my plant room, at least it wasn’t like that last time I was there, moving my plants. The insulation crossed the path to the walk in closet, and to the little heater I wanted. There was no one to help me gain access, despite 5 people on the clock.
Sigh.
While it was nice of the movers to move a small book case, I have no idea if they put the connectors where I’ll be able to find them if I’m lucky enough to have a place to put shelves back together. The book case wasn’t something I wanted. After they moved it I asked them to pack books. Surprisingly they had brought no boxes.
I wanted my little red fridge because Kitchen Angels sends me a weekend meal on Thursday, I think it’s Thursday, but I can’t keep it till the weekend because I have no way to refrigerate it. Hence, I wanted my little red fridge. But, although it was moved from the shelving it sat on to the kitchen counter, it didn’t get to come with me. Equally, I’d put the iron supplement for my citrus plants in it, because they/I need it, and I don’t have that.
I don’t know if the reason Pat was looking in the kitchen drawers instead of helping me pack and move things I wanted was because he found my pre-Columbian bead in the drawer near the wall next to the living room. Perhaps he was looking for more things like that. But, when he opened the drawer near the doorway to the hall a monitoring mouse (humor) startled him. He screamed, leaving the mouse looking bewildered, at least that’s how the mouse looked when I turned at the sound of the scream. In any case, that event interrupted me getting the plastic wrap and tablespoon I need to make NongShim Ramyun on Sundays, so I don’t have to spend money on DoorDash. The Ramyun is $17 for 20 packs. DoorDash is $20 for one meal.
5/19/2019 ~ I just got mail from the front desk. There’s a Notice of Status of Application, that says in the “Office Use Only” box: HTC% 30. I wonder what that means, re my housing application. Do you know?
I went through a box of papers I randomly brought along from the chrome cart next to my bed, and my social security card was in it. Happiness!!!
The deaf fellow helped me to the car at the winding up of the moving. I put a pair of shoes, some books, and something else I can’t remember into the trunk of the car and he folded my walker and put it into the back seat for me. He was super nice.
When Sonya and I got back to Motel 6, I forgot my shoes and the herb books. I’m hoping they are still there. If I have to go to court I’d hate to have only my flip flops. The pair of shoes I took on April 10, Eviction Day, never materialized at Motel 6. I couldn’t find them or a similar pair in denim on Friday when the movers were at 3255. So I took the black shoes I bought years ago to go to a Conference in New Orleans for Self Represented Parties. I was invited because I was in Justice Minzner’s Working Group on Self-Represented Litigants. Open Society/George Soros paid for my entire trip. I learned a lot, but little good it has done. I hope I can get the shoes from the trunk…
I had wanted one of the empty (no growing plant in it) TubTrug containers for my persimmon. And my rolling plant stands, they are costly. But there was no way to get someone to help me.
Finally, I found it odd that Michael was there when he hates to be “taken out of service” and more odd still when he asked me if I remembered him.
So stressful. I’ve been so dizzy that I googled dizziness last night. Apparently stress can cause dizziness, so I’m thinking stress is why I’m so dizzy periodically. It’s likely why my right hand has been shaking when I lift something, like a small can of fruit juice. And, likely how a cup dropped out of my hand the other day, making a lake of coffee on the floor.
I’m sorry I’m so much of a problem for you. On that subject I will simply say that it would have been nice if Wally Sargent hadn’t built the condo he sold me over a full outdoor toilet pit that ended up causing hydrogen sulfide inside my condo… which over the three years I lived there, caused nerve damage. I wish I could still walk ! Then no one would have to be “taken out of service” to give me a ride somewhere, I could easily take a bus.
Sincerely,
Karen Kline