I’ve had some bad experiences with insurance agents here in Moscow. An agent at a major insurance company once aggressively accused my wife (a native Muscovite) of not being a patriot after she muttered a complaint under her breath about excessive bureaucracy involved in purchasing a third-party liability insurance policy for our car.

Also, parked down the street from my apartment there’s a pack of vans, out of which some shady-looking dudes sell car insurance. By 4 p.m., they’re usually all totally hammered. They all huddle together in one of the vans chasing vodka shots with pickles and mayonnaise-based salads. I mean, it looks like a good time, but it doesn’t exactly reassure me about the services they’re offering.

Anyway, thing got extremely ugly this week between two car insurance agents vying for the same client outside a local traffic police precinct on Ulitsa Frunze in central Moscow, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

The potential client pulled up to the precinct to register his foreign car with police and was immediately swarmed by insurance agents hanging around outside and peddling accident coverage. The client, however, was of the indecisive variety, KP said, and his hesitation was the fuel that ignited a quarrel among the agents.

The conflict escalated quickly from verbal to physical, and then one of the agents pulled out a rubber bullet gun known as an osa, or “wasp,” and shot another agent in the eye and in the chest.

The cops and other agents scrambled to break up the melee, and the victim was hospitalized with serious injuries. The shooter is being charged with hooliganism, KP reported.