‘That painting took me a YEAR’: UPS damages and then discards priceless painting with no warning or remorse

It’s hard to put your trust in the hands of delivery drivers sometimes — too often we see examples of careless delivery drivers yeeting packages across front lawns, or we hear about someone’s gift going missing en route.

In this unfortunate case, a woman on TikTok was informed by UPS that her priceless painting had been damaged — you’d think given the decent wages a lot of drivers get paid, they’d be a bit more careful. Not only was it damaged, but according to her notification the piece of art was actually discarded rather than being returned — so there’s no chance whatsoever that she could try to restore it or at least keep a part of it, because, as you’ll come to find out, it has a great deal of sentimental value.

The artist, on the verge of tears, vents about the incredibly frustrating situation; “What is wrong with y’all, that painting took me a year!” Anyways, UPS didn’t offer any kind of explanation as to what caused the damage, and it seems there are no pictures either, which led people in the comments to smell something fishy. The fact that the delivery company decided to discard the painting before informing the sender rings some alarm bells and there was plenty of speculation as to what really happened.

thats code for “one of our employees stole your package”

They dont throw away damaged packages.

usually means like a truck was burned by vandals and it’s gone

my guess is maybe it came in contact with a biohazard? 😬 but you’d think they would say that in the notification!

As you can see, these are some pretty wild explanations, but is there any truth to them? It’s hard to say. There could be a genuine reason for this whole thing, after all, being a delivery driver does have its own unique set of risks and accidents do happen as one unfortunate FedEx driver found out. But regardless of whether it was an accident or not, some communication from UPS wouldn’t have gone amiss.

One very small silver lining is that the painting was insured as confirmed by her reply to one of the comments. Still, considering just how important it was to the artist it’s hard to imagine any amount of money really making it alright. In a second video replying to another comment, the woman explains that her son, Misha, was involved in some sort of incident in which he drowned. He now has severe brain damage and is on life support in the hospital. She made the piece for an art benefit show for her son to receive treatment for the injury.

Given the full context of the situation it is easy to see why it’s so upsetting — it’s a painful situation for a mother to be in and UPS seem utterly remorseless. A GoFundMe was set up for Misha’s recovery and seems to have had a recent surge in support with over $77,000 raised for medical bills so far.