All in the family

It's the end of school holidays here in New Zealand – school kids get a smattering of two-week breaks throughout the school year. Then their summer break starts mid-December, and ends sometime early in February.

Remember, North Americans – seasons are reversed here.

This is an important element in today's Absurdity Observation ... because many parents take their holidays to coincide with school holidays. So with the kids out of school for a fortnight, families do stuff together.

Some parents, however, continue to work, and often bring their crotchfruit to work with them.

So that sets the stage for my latest adventure ... a dad who thought it was a great idea to bring along two young boys to help him out with delivering stuff.

I finally decided to get a new couch for the Man Cave here. I bought it new (from the Warehouse's online store), which meant I would theoretically get professional delivery of said new hunk of furniture.

(I weighed the options of getting a used one from Trade Me, but the ones on offer just weren't singing to me – after a few weeks of surfing the listings, it was either a threadbare piece of shit, a nice looking used one but with a hefty starting price, or an actual retail store advertising their "specials" – overpriced in most cases.  Plus, I'd have to arrange to pick the thing up if I won an auction for most of them ... and said auctions often seemed to escalate to price levels not much cheaper than a new couch).

So delivery day arrives! The driver calls me well ahead of time, saying he'll be by somewhere between noon and 2. But then the absurdity started to unravel (or should I say, normality began to dissipate ...)

He asked a bunch of questions about my narrow dead-end road. Would he have trouble getting a truck up there? He'd been up a couple of times before and struggled with the tight turns and the plethora of parked cars on the street. I told him as it's mid-day, during the week, a lot of people were at work. So it should be easy – unless he was driving a semi tractor-trailer.  I mentioned I had two large trucks make it up here no problem (my movers, and my bed delivery guys).

He said he'd "try" to get up to the house. I thought: "OK, you're clearly new to Wellington. Give it a go, champ!"

He materialised at 2 pm, and emerged from the truck (same sized vehicle as the other ones that made it up here without a hitch) ... and then out of the cab popped out two children. Boys, who looked to be 11 or 12. These, it seemed, were his "helpers".

I'd watched my pro mover guys lug all sorts of large-ish things down to my house, and they had no problems. I observed the Wellington Beds guys lug my new King Size bed frame and mattress down the short steps too. They did it quickly and professionally.

Now I'm standing there, treated to the vaudeville-like slapstick of this  guy hemming and hawing about whether he could manage getting a couch down the few steps to my front door.

With both children on one end of the couch, the got it airborne – and it was immediately apparent he hadn't bothered to teach the boys how to properly lift.

Then I noticed his technique – or lack thereof. He, too, seemed to not have a handle on the basics of furniture hefting. They bobbled the couch back and forth, up and down. And for a moment it appeared it might sail off the cliff and down into Aro Valley.

They smashed into the (already munted) mailbox (on a post), nearly flattening it. Then they made the crucial 45º turn to the last few steps. Almost there, lads! Stick with it!

I ended up standing alongside the steps, reaching up, with a hand on the side of the couch, as they struggled mightily to get it down ... how three people could make the carrying of a couch look so difficult boggled my mind.

I could see the chance of the boys losing their grip was high. I was not wrong. I ended up catching the end of the couch myself, and helping the dad guy get it into my house.

I noted the couch was NOT heavy. I could balance the thing with one hand in the centre on my end. Certainly I'm a large adult of perhaps better than average strength, but I have picked up and moved much heavier things in my dim and distant past. The kids AND the dad just didn't seem to have a clue about what they were doing.

Thankfully, the couch was double-wrapped with some bubble wrap and some other scuff-resistant stuff, so no damage was incurred.

But take note, Warehouse – look into choosing your delivery service a bit more carefully. This pack of amateurs should not have been trusted to get the job done right.

And Mainfreight? What in the holy hell are you doing, allowing a man to take two underage kids with zero training along as assistants to move large items?

The couch is sweet-as, by the way. I have already had two great naps on it, attempting to watch something on TV.