The Frigo of Doom

We haven’t gone on about it too much here on the blog, but when we moved into this furnished apartment it was a *disaster.* Filthy from the drawers to the floors, broken appliances, an unmade bed with a pile of crumbs on the chair next to it….just NO.

It has taken us almost a month to get things sorted, and granted the landlord has been very responsive, though why he thinks it’s best to deal with cleanliness and needed repairs after his tenants have arrived instead of before, I’ll never know.

Anyway, one of the big problems was the refrigerator (in localspeak: frigo, “fridge”). It was leaking cups of defrost water from the freezer into the main compartment every few days, soaking our food and making the frigo unusable and unsanitary.

It was also clearly a known issue, because before we arrived somebody had put a large measuring cup in the back of the frigo which, when we discovered it, was already full of rusty-colored run-off. How do you say ewwwww in French?

We contacted the landlord about it, who responded by having some associate of his come over and pronounce the leakage “normal,” but we knew different. I mean, c’mon: we’ve used refrigerators before. Even Québec refrigerators. We’re only partially stupid, despite being U.S.ians.

But before we pestered the landlord about it again, we tried to make it easier for him. We researched the leakage and discovered it’s a fairly common defrost drain issue, so could he please send a repairperson to deal with it and maybe replace some parts?

Instead, the landlord decided to replace the entire refrigerator.

Me:

It’s a fair question because this year, we’re living on the top floor of an older multi-unit walk-up with no elevator. The nice thing about being on the top floor is we have a big skylight that allows beautiful natural lighting throughout the kitchen and living room.

The bad thing is that going up and down multiple flights of stairs, especially with large items like oversized luggage and storage cases (as we did when we moved in) is an exhausting and somewhat painful process.

Though I was reassured by the landlord that hauling frigos up and down staircases is “normal” for Montréal appliance movers–uh-oh, there’s that word again–I was skeptical. And worried.

But having no choice in the matter, I emptied the icky measuring cup at the back of the fridge, stuck it back in there with some tea towels to sop up the ongoing run-off, and awaited our appointed Frigo Replacement Day.

On F.R.D. morning, two appliance moving guys–one short and burly and one tall and “well fit“–pulled up, jostled the old frigo out of its niche to make room for the new one, then hammocked the new fridge up the stairs on big carrying straps. As they worked their way up the 3.5 flights to our door, there were several abrupt stops accompanied by violent banging, shouts, pained groans, and multi-lingual swearing.

For as I had feared, not only were the moving guys suffering as they struggled to get our replacement frigo up the stairs, but our neighbors could not avoid getting quite the earful as well.

We don’t know any of our neighbors despite coming face-to-face with a couple of them in the vestibule–Montrealers are kinda stand-offish, TBH–but after F.R.D. they surely knew who *we* were, and in which apartment we lived.

And to make the F.R.D. extra-memorable, it was the hottest and most humid day the year thus far. We were miserable just sitting around doing nothing, much less having to schlep major appliances up antique stairwells.

I kept apologizing to mes gars for this horror, saying we were only renters and we had asked the landlord to just repair the old one, but not-our-building, not-our-frigo, you know? The guys reassured us they were okay, but their grunts and panting and swears told us otherwise.

If the indicator levels on my Cuss-O-Meter are accurate, the only thing worse than getting the new frigo *up* the stairs was getting the old one *down.* The old leaky fridge was bigger than the replacement, and our staircase is fairly narrow, so the frigo wouldn’t go around the corners on the landings. Donc, these poor guys had to heave it over each bannister to get it down to the next flight of stairs, *all*the*way*down.*

We felt so guilty. During a pause to drink the cold water we proffered, they confessed that this was the first time this had happened in their frigo-moving experience. We felt even more guilty. Suffice to say, the downhill swearing-storm was formidable.

That said, it was also notable that the communication and cursing of the frigo movers seamlessly melded French and English. Their cant was fully bilingual, even trilingual if you count the ai-ai-ai parts as Italian/Spanish/Portuguese. Québec’s Ministry of the French Language would definitely not approve, but I found it fascinating.

Of course I stealthed some audio, like ya do.

The 2-minute mp3 below is a clip-show of the 30-45 minute battle royale up and down the staircase. My French isn’t good enough to understand all that was said, but you can hear the refrain “un, deux, trois, GO” several times as they hefted the frigo, and “bro” and multiple f-bombs as well.

If you know any Québec French, you may recognize les sacres, i.e. swearing, which in Québec makes use of religious imagery (hence “sacres”). Those of you who don’t speak Québec French, trust me: you’ll still get the gist. This recording is NSFW in both English and French (unless your work is hauling frigos around).

Enjoy while being glad this isn’t you:

When the old frigo was finally wrestled into the truck, and after we had been warned not to plug in the replacement frigo for several hours due to it having been agitated so much, we apologized again and gave the movers a cash pourboire along with our thanks, since we didn’t know if the landlord had tipped them. IMHO they should have been able to add a surcharge to the landlord’s bill for this high-risk and truly uncomfortable operation. I hope they didn’t suffer any lasting damage.

Though it was an interesting day, it was really frustrating, not just because of the disruption to our work day (and the entire building) but because the old frigo didn’t need even replacement, just a new part or two. We hope it was recycled or repaired somehow, not just dumped in a landfill, but again: not-our-building, not-our-frigo.

And not our hernia either, thankfully.

Even after all that agitation, the replacement fridge seems to work fine…for now. Restez cool, mes ami.e.s.