Episode 005 - The Weirdly Rude Mover
- Julie Kim
- Mar 19
- 15 min read
Updated: Apr 13
Get ready to be BOTHERED about this story of a moving guy who asked way too many personal questions, scolded his female client, and made inappropriate comments about her shoes. It was a dilemma for the woman for sure, and she even initially left a tip because he was watching as she made payment. You will not believe how many red flags are in this story.
Join comedian Julie Kim as she describes this most weirdest move ever and describes all of the things she wishes she did differently (which is almost everything).
Preparing for the big move
Years ago, I moved in with my now husband. We will call him “Steve”. We were engaged and planning to plan to have a child – it was an exciting time.
We hired a professional moving company whose ads we’d seen a lot around town (billboards, ads on buses, signage on their many trucks). The obviously large advertising budget got our attention, so I assumed a company with such a large budget must be reputable and successful. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of time searching. Decision made.
Being both over 25, “Steve” and I no longer utilized the model offering pizza and beer to friends to help us move. This is one of the signs of true adulting: not bartering food and drink in exchange for physical services that could risk your life or the lives of your friends who are busy with other responsibilities and also all of them said no. 🤣
It was a particularly busy time for me, I had a corporate-ish gig for which the client paid me by the hour. It took no real financial analysis to figure out that it was better for me to work instead of being part of moving day (I.e., working to pay for the move). Instead, my then boyfriend took his paid day off from more conventional employment to accompany the movers. I tend to make decisions largely with logic and little sentimentality, except in the present day when it comes to family time. I am to be present for my child and husband and actively make core memories or I’m a piece of shit parent.
Another example: I outsourced my wedding planning and chose only the vows and the extra charge for candles in the aisle because I thought if the candles caught fire, we maybe could get a refund for inhaling smoke and getting burnt, and maybe losing a few guests to third degree burns. You know I’m kidding when it comes to some or all of this (I’ll leave the extent of the kidding a mystery). While some could say it’s a position of entitlement and privilege to outsource, I feel like it’s more of a position of privilege to indulge in dissecting the details about flowers and decorations for your “special day” with the time that you have.
We ordered moving services from our two separate abodes, and additional packing services for me, as I hate packing. “Steve” (should I stop with the quotes now?) is much more organized and tidy, so he had no problem packing his own things. He also had fewer things than I did, because I am a child of immigrants who admittedly hoards a bit.
The moving truck went first to Steve’s place, then to my place, and then the truck took everything to our new place. There were two movers, an older guy named who we will call “Lippy” because he talked so much. And there was a younger guy who’s name we don’t recall, probably because he was heads down, doing his job diligently and well. Steve recalls that the second mover was a student at the University of British Columbia.
His place
They moved the stuff out of Steve’s place, which took about an hour.
During the move, Lippy noticed some of Steve’s certificates and posters and identified a company he used to work for. Lippy shared he had just moved somebody who also worked at that company. He shared the person’s full name and where they had moved to. Note: to this day, we aren’t sure about mover-client confidentiality laws, but if they exist, Lippy definitely breached them. That was red flag moment #1. 🚩
Lippy also commented that Steve was moving from a “less nice” area to a “better” area and actually said “you’re moving up in the world.” Red glag moment #2. 🚩🚩 I guess that’s better than if he was moving from a nicer place to a less nice place and said “you’re really moving down in the world.” But still… weird and rude.
One Sunday afternoon, I took my daughter, then six years old, to a busy retail pharmacy chain location downtown.
My place
When the movers got to my place, they were surprised at the amount of packing required, and enlisted a third person to help. Not a random person, but someone who also worked at the moving company. The third guy was nice enough and did his job without fuss. This situation was perhaps a fault on both sides – I did not quantify the amount of required packing, and I do not recall them asking. I can’t say I know where to start quantifying my belongings, but if there was a framework, I would have welcomed it because I love conceptual structure.
Lippy vocalized his displeasure at the delay in their schedule, Steve later told me. Lippy whined the way our child (who now exists) cleans her room while saying ”Ohhhhhh, do I HAVE to do this?”. It’s annoying when a child does it, and it was more annoying that a grown ass man who was being paid for a job did it. Count them - three red flags: 🚩🚩🚩.
I packed most of my stuff, but left the kitchen for the movers (cutlery, pots, pans, plates, glasses, mugs, etc.). Now, you may be thinking, “But plates and glasses can shatter,” and this is where I tell you I had just restarted working after a break to pursue higher education. I didn’t have fancy stuff. I was at Level 2 of adulting, where one still has IKEA stuff, but the nicer IKEA stuff. No Lack tables here (IYKYK).
Other things I didn't pack were my coats and shoes. Steve said that Lippy noted I had some nice shoes and asked what I do for a living. Four red flags. 🚩🚩🚩🚩
He also asked if we bought or rented our new place – WTF. Let’s count that as red flag #5. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
These are the two questions I clock when I first meet someone: my occupation and housing status. If they ask even one of these questions early on, it’s a giant crimson red flag for me. These questions are asked to figure out how much money someone else has or makes. Personally, I’d love to know what someone does for a living because it tells me what they do with at least half of their waking hours and sometimes reveals their passion or unique skills. But in most cases, it seems to be about comparison, which is yuck. Ick.
Steve gave him a vague answer about what I did (“professional services”). I always ask him to be vague because I value privacy and keep personal details super close to me. The reasons are… private. LOL.
Our place
After a few hours, they were finally moving things into our new place.
Although I opted to work for optimal efficiency and cost-effectiveness, I checked in via text and phone for moral support.
Steve told me that everything was going pretty well.
I felt a little bad that I wasn’t there in the trenches, maybe a little bit of FOMO, and a little bit of guilt for not being there for an important milestone. I am a somewhat feeling human, after all. Eventually, I went to our new home, an hour or so before the move was supposed to end.
I walked into the new space and noticed the movers had moved in most boxes, but they were still going back and forth. I smiled and said hello to both of the movers.
Within a minute, Lippy said loudly and admonishingly to me, “We’re a little behind because SOMEONE didn’t do their packing.” He went on about how, normally, if there was so much packing, he would come the day before and label everything. Welcome to the sixth red flag moment. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Neat. If someone had told me about that option, I would have opted for it. Again, the moving company did not properly ask me to quantify how much there was to pack.
This interaction was so weird and unnecessary because this was in the past. They had addressed it with Steve, and we had all supposedly moved on. Lippy wanted to re-hash it with me, in more detail. He was scolding me in my own home while doing a job I was paying him by the hour. Some people have trouble reading a room. Lippy seemed to have trouble reading the world.
I think I responded by saying nothing and smiling. That’s what I do when I start to realize that I hate someone.
I do not remember what Lippy looked like. My husband thinks he looked a little bit like Sean Astin, the actor, circa the release of the movie Rudy. Rudy is some mens' favourite movie and a movie that some men will admit to crying at. It's their underdog sports story. I disagree about the resemblance. I recall someone closer to a Will Ferrel look. But ok.
Rudy, though, was a lot different than Lippy. Rudy would never stop in the middle of his hard work and randomly comment other other peoples' belongings or make nosey enquiries about their financial status. Rudy just did the fucking work.
Then, he said in a sassy and accusatory tone, “You have some nice shoes. You must be a very fortunate lady.” We’re at #7 now. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
I said, “I do. I worked a lot and bought them for myself.”
He responded, “Tell me about it.”
What? That didn’t make sense. He continued to pester me and asked what I did for a living. I was vague. He then told me that Steve had already told him, looking for elaboration or validation. I won’t count a weak response to a weird red flag moment as a separate red flag moment. We’re still at 7.
I was at a point of being potentially offended, but more so intrigued by this strange mover man and his audacity.
People often say that moving is stressful. But is it stressful for movers, too? So that they act weird and inappropriately? Do I care? No.
I am quite convinced that Steve and I couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. He actually bought the movers lunch, which I’m still angry about nearly ten years later because we weren’t hosting friends. If it was a gesture to compensate for the packing scenario, fuck that. Generally, we’re nice to people who come in to do anything in our home. I think there’s also an uneven dynamic when two guys are handling all of your stuff and are in your personal space. In short, it wasn’t us.
When the internet installation person came during the move, Steve offered everyone coconut water. Drinking coconut water was part of the zeitgeist back then. It was the height of the coconut water movement. You couldn’t go to a grocery store without seeing coconut water displayed in cartons or glass bottles. And, it was not and still is not cheap.
As Lippy drank the expensive coconut water that we paid for and that he willingly accepted, he told us with disdain, how much he hated coconut water.
Oh no I stopped tracking red flag moments? Once sec…
Calling red flag #8, right there. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Then, he made a random comment about being a gay man. He used a term that felt was derogatory but don’t recall what he said. He was going for shock effect, perhaps. Nine red flags - no question. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 I feel like this could count as two ref glags but I’ll count conservatively and we’re still at 9.
He also made a big point to say that he used to work on the executive floor of IBM. He didn't say he was an executive (Although I don’t know anything about this, I assure you he was not). Welcome to the moment the tenth red flag was called. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
At no point did we ask him any personal questions. He was nosey, scolded me, and wanted us to know things about him that we didn’t want to know. Plus, he complained about being behind on the move, while wasting our time with these unwanted little talk sessions.
Lippy MUST have known what he was doing. He didn’t just let things slip out of his mouth that many times. These were deliberate comments. Deliberate acts of disrespect. He was crossing the line many times. Dancing past the boundaries of appropriate words and actions. I wonder what satisfaction he was getting.
Time to pay up early
When the move was almost complete, but not right near the end (the other mover kept working), Lippy brought a tablet to me to pay. It was weirdly early. Imagine being at a restaurant and not being done your entre, and the server brings the bill and wants you to pay and tip at that time. WTF? We’re at 11 red flags. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
In what was red flag moment #12, Lippy also watched the tablet with both eyes as I entered a tip. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
I didn't know what to do, because I already knew I was not giving a gigantic tip. I also knew that it would be a big statement to nous tip anything as he was watching. I didn’t want to do that while these men were in our home where all of our stuff was. I also wasn’t sure that I wanted to address even one of the many rude and weird occurrences with Lippy while they were there. Twelve red flags called up to that point, to be exact.
I was conflicted because I wanted to tip the other guy, but not Lippy. I didn't have the time to call their head office as it was happening, and I didn’t feel comfortable with this sort of conflict while the guys were in our home. I added a nominal tip of $50 just to enter something because he was watching, but not more.
Maybe 20 minutes later, they were done moving. Lippy hollered a “ok bye” left without so much as making eye contact.
WTF was this?
I’ve re-hashed all these weird little comments and interactions over and over. My reactions include being amused, shocked, fascinated, offended, maybe flattered, and overall BOTHERED.
What stands out the most is that the mover was relatively respectful to "Steve" (I was going to stop with the quotes, wasn't I?), aside from inquiring about our financial status, commenting on our choice of neighbourhoods, and breaching a former client’s privacy. I’m now realizing that those comments add up on their own to be weird and inappropriate.
Lippy spoke only to me in a scolding manner from packing to pointing out I had nice shoes (recall his sassy “you must be a very fortunate lady” comment to me).
Perhaps he felt the need to most awkwardly peacock with his broken ego and sparse feathers, to feel superior by mentioning his previous job or attributing my nice shoes to me being “fortunate.”
Was he fishing for compliments or to be accepted by us? Was he trying to be friends? If so he achieved the opposite. I hereby declare that I will never be friends with him.
Maybe with all the complaining, he was trying to guilt me/us into tipping more.
Someone tell me because I can’t figure any of this out! I remain kind of fascinated.
Maybe Lippy was just an odd fucking duck. Maybe he needed extra attention and validation that day and it happened to be the day he did a job for us. But we paid him to do all of this weird sh1t to us in our home! What a strange, fussy man.
A teachable moment
This was the first time my husband witnessed such an overt 180 in terms of how someone treated him versus a woman. He described with fascination how Lippy’s whole body language, mood, and tone shifted the moment I walked in the door. He’d never seen anything like it before.
Steve also notes that I walked in with a smile and totally normal behaviour. I was dressed nicely but not super nicely. I was nice but not overly nice as if to invite criticism or conversation. Something about me made Lippy need to posture, lay into me, and brag about himself. Even now, I don’t quite know how to label or explain the behaviour.
Is it me? I'm the problem, it's me?
Surely Lippy has moved for more affluent people with nicer things to “better” places. Surely some of them must’ve been women, and some of them Asian. We were in a major cosmopolitan city. This is not to say he grew up in such an area with progressive views.
The only visible difference between my husband and I is that he is a man and he is Caucasian. Also, he has a penis. So, I can’t help but assume that me being female or Asian made this man malfunction. I cannot conceive that he would act this way to an old white man. Tom Hanks would have an easier time with Lippy for sure.
I don’t want to think this, but I’ve wondered if it was because I’m a woman, or an Asian woman. Perhaps he perceived I was a high-earning or high-performing woman, and we know that’s a demographic that’s not widely liked among some men. Men don’t usually scold other men they are doing a job for, do they?
Leave this to the men?
I have moved several times before, as a single lady, and experienced movers act inappropriately. before Two examples:
In Toronto, the mover had to disassemble my storage bed before moving but he couldn’t figure it out. He got angry about it, swore out loud, and made calls to the head office pointing out how far behind they were. He directed some of his anger to me. I pointed out it was not my fault. And he actually said: “Well, it is your fault, because if you didn't need movers, I wouldn't have to be here!”
On another occasion, the hired mover was an Asian man who dropped all his stuff, stood in the middle of the living room, and he said, “Wow, this is a nice place. What is this? Half a mil?”
Moving services seem to have a workforce of mostly men, in my experience. Maybe when we need moving services is where I let my husband be the face of the family. Not because I’m incapable, but to avoid the BS. Same for tire or mechanic services. Oh, I can’t forget car dealerships (because I’ve had some weird experiences there, too I’ll save my car stories for another blog/podcast episode).
In return, I deal with the areas where he could face discrimination which is… no where? Okay, we’re splitting all other responsibilities equally in half.
On a mission for resolution
I needed to know what all of this was, and needed at least some resolution.
Anyway, I looked up reviews for the company, scanning for similar experiences or comments about Lippy. I found one that said that Lippy did a great job, which was left by a man. Most reviews were positive overall for the company.
I was left unsettled. So, here’s what I did (the steps are to organize here as I write, and this was not a plan that was pre-assembled):
Step one: I sent a letter to the company’s general inbox. More than a week went by with no reply.
Step two: I then wrote to the CEO on LinkedIn. I asked if he wanted to know about my experience. He replied and said that he takes service very seriously. I shared all of these red flag moments(not calling them but it was very much implied that my sentiments were “WTF?”). He apologized and said someone would get back to me.
Step three: More than two weeks passed and I heard from no one. I called and spoke with someone from the company. During our conversation, she told me I must have misunderstood. She said, “Well, that's really strange. We've never had a complaint about him before.”
I fucking hate when people do that. Just because you haven't heard anything similar about someone doesn't mean that I must be mistaken. If I return something defective it's not ok to say, “We've never had the switch on our BBQ lighter fall off and start a combustible fire on someone’s face, burning off their eyebrows before. You must have imagined it.” FFS.
She let me know that they’d look into it.
Partial closure
In the end, I said I wanted my tip back because I resented that I gave it under duress with Lippy purposely standing and watching me pay. They gave it back, but offered nothing more as a gesture in exchange for this 12 red flag ordeal.
One month after my LinkedIn message to the CEO, a customer experience rep emailed to say “there was maybe some miscommunication with a few people on our side who were supposed to speak with you about the issues you presented” and gave an apology. It included this paragraph:
Finally.
I don’t leave reviews – good or bad. I’m a review leach. I take from reviews, basing so many decisions about purchases and restaurants, but I don’t contribute. I’m a review freeloader. I’m sorry!
A year or two ago, I recounted the story to a friend and got fired up again. So much so, I left a review - possibly my first ever - to share my experience and warn others. Not to complain and get anything from the company. But the company replied to the review immediately and said they couldn't find records of it and said to email them. I did not reply. The company took it down. Of course. I did not repost it. With this blog and podcast episode, I’m done with this. Probably.
What would I do differently?
I have three regrets. First, I regret being afraid to ask for more compensation for the BS because I didn’t want to seem cheap. Looking back now, I feel like having $1,000 waived (not just the tip) would have been a fair thing to ask for. It was about the principle, and I didn’t want to muddy it by saying “Also, give it to me for free.”
Secondly, I also regret how nice we were to this man who was rude and intrusive in our home. I think we let him take it too far, but at the same time, we were interested to see what absurd thing he would say or do next. Sometimes, I love a good story more than I like being comfortable.
Also, Steve bought them lunch that day. I’m mad at him for buying them lunch and coconut water. Well, the ones for Lippy. We weren’t rich (I spent it all on shoes, lol kidding). Is this practice of feeding your movers normal or expected? I sometimes randomly bring this up to my husband and say, “Why did you do that?!?!!?”
Here’s what I would do if this happened today:
Tell Lippy to shut those lips and keep working.
Ask Lippy to leave after the first or second red flag.
Rather than tip on the spot while Lippy purposely stood and watched to pressure me, I would tell him I need to think about payment and settle directly with the company.
An additional regret was not asking the company if I could tip the student separately. Which leads me to...
Missed connections
Here’s a public plea: To the other mover, the young guy who was a UBC student working for a big moving company in Vancouver during the summer of 2015: I hope you’re doing well. Contact me so I can give you a proper tip (not including interest).
Thanks for reading, everyone.
Comment or rate below! If you have a story to share that could be related to a future episode or this one, email us at bothered@juliekimcomedy.com.
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