saturday's woes and a riff on the purpose of insurance

so other than being tired, and having a nagging persistent cough, the day might've been alright for a saturday.

except sometimes it's really best to just walk away when it's time to go and not get involved in shit.

so as i'm leaving i see a woman come in the door with a painting.
this is just the sort of thing that you learn to dread...someone who wants to ship a painting somewhere. it's not like anyone has ever yet come in with a painting just because they want to show it to you before they take it over to the ebay store or the frame shop...oh no. that would be nice, but it hasn't happened yet. nope, this is just the sort of thing that is a sign of troubles ahead.
from what i've come to understand, people that want to mail paintings have no idea what they're getting themselves into, and no matter how much they may have spent personally on the painting, or on having it framed, they have no subsequent interest in spending what is necessary to ship it somewhere safely. if you left it up to them, they'd happily shove it in some rinky dink cardboard box with some newspaper, and bring it to you fully expecting the shipping price to be in the neighborhood of $10. The reality usually looks more like $100 and that's kind of a starting place. One the other week came to about $150 because not only was it oversize category 3, but it was also going to the most distant geographic point from here which happens to be Florida.

This is not the sort of thing you want to leave in the hands of the inexperienced. Not that i'm even remotely in the realm of expert, but i have an idea of how bad things can get. So instead of leaving like i should have done, I stayed, out of some naive belief that i could do some damage control. So in all of my tired delirium I pick up this massively oversized painting to put it on a scale, and whether my fatigue, lack of sleep or head-cold induced disorientation was at fault, I instead managed to steer it into the sharp corner of a counter and put a nice fat ding in the side of the frame.

At least she didn't start yelling, but this adequately illustrates the purpose of liability insurance.

In the future I will leave well enough alone.

At least I won't have to give her the insurance speech...