If life is too short to ice a cake, then it’s too short to hold a grudge.
So I swallowed my pride and some aspro and returned to the hardware store for more paint. I even found the same young man to help me, and this time I was quite quick in choosing the exact shade of brown, not too dark, some tan, a bit of orange but not too much, a sort of dullish yet warm brown with an undercurrent of earthy tones yet with a lightness to it. It took me only a little over an hour.
As I was leaving, I noticed the young man had made a mistake, I wanted one gallon, he gave me two. I tried to give him the other gallon back, he refused to take it! Extraordinary.
He absolutely insisted that I should take double what I needed, he told me that he didn’t want me to trouble myself by coming back to his shop again.
What a charming young chap. Now that’s good manners.