My wife and I had a moving experience last week, and for me it was a reminder that, even though the workers’ compensation industry is out of sight and mind for most on a daily basis, its existence is vital to the health and continuation of our economy. Over these past two weeks we purchased a new home and sold our old one. And if you don’t think moving after 11 years in one location is not an experience, then you just haven’t had the pleasure.
We closed on the new home 9 days before selling our old one. We did this primarily because there was some extensive work we wanted to have done at the new abode prior to our moving in. Over the course of 9 days we were inundated dealing with a wide variety of professions; painters, carpet installers, handymen, screen enclosure specialists, title agents, lawyers, movers, appliance delivery people, electricians, furniture delivery people, pool specialists and more. My wife and I, it seems, have committed to singlehandedly restarting Florida’s economy. Governor DeSantis should have been at the ribbon cutting for the new home.
Still, all of these workers had one thing in common. The risk of their daily work activities was quietly being covered by the existence of the workers’ compensation system. Fortunately, no one was hurt during this process.
Although I suspect one mover will be needing a truss from the experience.
Moving can be so much fun. You spend weeks prepping, going through your things to determine what will make the trip and what will be relegated to the Goodwill dustbin. Despite having discarded numerous pieces of furniture to “simplify” our house for showing, as well as selling items on Facebook marketplace and multiple Goodwill runs, we still ended up moving an inordinate amount of crap. In fact, I suspect half the things delivered to the new house aren’t even ours. I think the movers, who used two trucks for the operation, already had a houseful of contents on one of them before they started. Either that, or one of those trucks was a circus version of a clown car; the boxes just kept coming.
My wife, an intellectual before she married me, has a library that consists of over 8 tall shelf units of old and unique books. The entire collection, along with most of our heaviest furniture, went upstairs at the new residence (hence the earlier reference on the need for a truss). And the fact that we even have an upstairs is ironic, considering the original point of our move was to downsize, simplify and get away from our second story master suite. It turns out we “downsized’ by buying a home with 900 additional square feet, a pool and spa, three times the land and 2 additional bathrooms.
It appears we suck at the concept of downsizing and simplifying.
That, however, is the true beauty of workers’ compensation. As the home buzzed with the activity of all these workers, I was keenly aware that they were being protected by a system that didn’t care how stupid my decisions are. The system doesn’t ask questions of me, or of what choices led to the work activity. It only cares to ensure that claimed injuries are the result of the work required by my poor planning.
Is this a great country or what?
Speaking of poor planning, I inadvertently left our new riding mower in the back of the garage, which the movers filled to capacity with assorted boxes that I am sure belong to someone else. It will probably be about 4 months before I will be able to reach the thing and mow my new yard. That means I will have to hire a company to do so; a company that will have a workers’ compensation policy in place to protect their workers from my lack of foresight.
And even though in the absence of injury no one will give it a single thought, it will still be there, enabling commerce and protecting interests. That is a moving experience, indeed.