If all goes as planned, I will become the owner (part-owner, with a bank owning the rest) of my very first condo on Monday. Today’s task during my “lunch break” was getting estimates for movers. I’d forgotten in the last 5 years how much I hate getting estimates for movers.

And estimates are stupid, anyway. What do I need? I need to know how much you’re going to charge me per hour. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that if your moving company hires conscientious movers, they’re going to take about the same length of time as another company’s movers, assuming the team is the same number of people. So tell me that you have a 3-person crew, your hourly rate is $X and you add on $Y for travel time (or you don’t add on for travel time, or whatever), and I’ll decide which is the least expensive (or if there’s a reason to go with a company that isn’t the least expensive).

Unfortunately that plan gets all out of whack when one of the companies emails back and says that they don’t use 3-person teams, they use 5-person teams. So…quicker, but more expensive per hour. And suddenly the length of time becomes a factor. Will a 5-person team use the same number of person-hours as a 3-person team?

And, a consideration from my first time hiring movers: do I care, or how much do I care, if a company refers to its movers as “men” or as “movers”? I’d love to hear from you on this point.