The Congélateur

The apartment we are renting in Toulouse did not have freezer section in the fridge. Our landlord, Vincent, said he would spring for a new freezer (a congélateur in French), so of course we said yes. We live on the fourth floor, which in France is four floors above the ground floor and the elevator can barely hold two people standing very, very close, spooning if you will. It sometimes takes us a few dance moves in the elevator to get it to go up if we are carrying groceries. Slide to the left, slide to the right, do the hokie pokie and voilà, it starts!

But I digress. Vincent ordered it and gave explicit instructions that the congélateur (I love this word), was to be delivered up to our apartment, and not to use the elevator as it was too small.

The delivery guys showed up as I was walking back from the market. Kirsty was having a chat with the guy who had set the congélateur on the ground outside of the entrance to the apartments. This was a far as he was going to move it as it was not his job to carry it up the stairs, or even into the apartment complex. Delivery to the outside door was his motto. 

She told him to sling his hook and take the congélateur back if he wasn’t going deliver it upstairs to our front door. So off they went and we told Vincent what had happened and he was a bit put off by these guys as he had paid extra to get the thing hauled up to our apartment. He called the store and chewed some butt and a new delivery date was set.

A few days later the new delivery guys showed up and brought it inside the lobby and stuck it in the elevator (by itself), pushed the button for the fourth floor and closed the door. The elevator stayed put and would not go up. One of the guys tried to open the door but it was locked closed.  Nothing we could do would open the door. Nor could we call the elevator up to our floor. It was stuck, unusable on the ground floor.

Your man called a phone number on the elevator and talked with somebody who said he would send someone around to sort out the problem. The delivery guys said they had deliveries to make so, au revoir and good luck. 

We went back to our apartment and waited for the elevator guy to call. He wasn’t too long and before you knew it, we were standing there before the open elevator door looking at a congélateur that was too big for the elevator. I pulled it out and the elevator guy gave a few hand signals to maybe take it out of the box and see if it would then fit. After a bit of pushing and shoving, I got it in the elevator and he made sure the door would close. Up it went, and Kirsty and I carted it the rest of the way into our apartment. Easy peasy. By the way, our congélateur model name is California. True story.

Peace my friends!