Thursday, March 26, 2009

He's a deadbeat, Julie

Among the tens of thousands of diamonds I've personally seen in my work, I've only ever come across maybe four or five with personalized inscriptions on them, so seeing one on a stone is one of the few "events" that can still almost excite my workday. In the beginning, I used to joke (to myself) that stones with the word "love" on them would have to be flagged with the "inscription is profane or derogatory" comment. Harhar, I would laugh to myself, only in my own head.

Today brought me such a stone, and, after getting past the obligatory silent chuckle at my inside joke with myself, I proceeded with my inspection. It was awful.

For starters, the inscription was graceless and confusingly punctuation-free. "TO (woman's name omitted) I LOVE YOU (man's name omitted)," it read. But, really, it was the stone itself that was trash. On the clarity scale, I rated it on the high end of the bottom "Included" tier, meaning that it was about as ugly as a diamond could get without being at risk of shattering from severe structural damage. It was definitely not the sort of diamond that I would offer to impress a lady. At any magnification at which the inscription would be legible, the grotesque inclusions would be far more likely to catch the eye. Nor was this a formerly good stone that maybe had been dropped a few too many times. The rock was rotten to its core, suffering from mostly internal growth features.

I could only imagine that the loser who sent this one in for grading, also having it newly inscribed just hours before it came under my scope, must have thought it quite a bargain when he decided to cheap out on this expression of his love. Why did he even bother? A diamond is a luxury item with no practical use. Its only purpose is to be expensive, with the extravagant cost reflecting in turn how deeply the buyer cherishes the intended recipient. What is the message in offering a budget diamond?

The whole affair made me a little sad, but, mostly, I felt disgusted and found myself hopefully picturing the gift being met with well-deserved heart-shattering rejection. *sigh* Looks like I let myself get too close to the assignment.

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