We were having guests over yesterday for dinner. Great people, and we haven’t seen them in some time. So, in the morning, the hot water heater decided to crap out. It’s Sunday. The day that plumbers raise their hourly fee from a thousand dollars an hour to a million. This isn’t really an “emergency” as such, more an inconvenience until Monday. But we’re washing all those wonderful decorative, hand-painted serving pieces by hand in cold water. Until the repair person comes, we’ll suspend a few high-level bodily hygiene functions.
Remember when appliances used to last forever? People would leave their appliances to the next generation. “To my great-granddaughter Belinda, I leave my Zenith television and the Kelvinator Foodarama. Her brother gets the Philco dryer and my Westinghouse stock.” Our first refrigerator, inherited from my wife’s parents when we were first married in the ‘70’s, was vintage, circa World War II. That old soldier carried on for more than thirty years. Of course, the freezer was the size of a pencil box, but it ran well and kept things cold. That’s what you want. We got their old dishwasher too – one of those that you rolled over to the sink and hooked onto the faucet. It was old then, but it kept our dishes nicely clean until we sold the house ten years later. We also had my parents’ old washer and dryer. They kept us in clean clothes again until we moved out. Many years after that, when we moved to our present location, we updated the kitchen with some new appliances. The new dishwasher lasted just over three years – I remember that specifically because the warrantee had run out a month before – when the electronic control panel went all kaflooky-flooky and had to be replaced, at a cost of practically what we’d paid for the whole dishwasher. I still remember setting up the appointment for repairs. The agent on the phone informed me in a rather snippy tone that, had I purchased the extended warrantee, I wouldn’t have to worry about the cost. I shot back that perhaps were they not manufacturing their appliances in a third world country and transporting them by mule train to the port of departure, we also wouldn’t be having this conversation either. I may have had that same agent a bit later when we bought a new refrigerator. It had dual doors, and when it arrived and was being set up, I noticed that the paint was chipped all around the edges of the two doors. So I’m back on the phone to what is ironically called Customer Service. Another Ms Snippet told me they would repaint the doors. I asked her if that would be an acceptable solution in the event she bought a new car that was scratched on delivery. No, she admitted, it wouldn’t. They’d replace the fridge. That conjured up images once again of taking everything out and putting it into coolers, buying bags of ice, etc. etc. “Here’s a thought,” I ventured. “What if you just replace the doors, because the unit works fine otherwise, and that way we don’t have to take out all our worldly edible possessions again.” She agreed, and that’s what we did. I won’t say what chain this is, but I’ll just mention that they’ve recently announced another big batch of store closings, and their signature appliance brand is disappearing. And I’m pretty sure those chipped doors have been passed on from customer to customer until they find somebody either visually impaired or unwilling to “make a fuss”.
As usual, I’ve digressed. Back to the topic at hand. Why do appliances not only break down, but they choose to do it at the most inopportune times? It’s really a gift they have. We had the garbage disposal seize up on Christmas Eve. Of course, that was a year that we were hosting dinner for the extended family. More than likely, it was the potato peels that sent it into its final death spiral. Truth be told, this is our third disposal at this site. The second bit the dust when we were hosting a brunch, and the egg shells were the items guilty of disposal abuse. I remember that incident clearly too. When the plumber was looking things over, he remarked that “it looks like somebody poured sand into it”. I explained that perhaps ground egg shells may resemble sand. In a rare moment of restraint, I made no mention that I don’t usually keep bags of sand handy in case I need to send a household appliance into the great beyond.
When we built a house some years ago, our friends were building next door. We invited them over for dinner to celebrate the new houses. That was the day the gas grill decided its useful life was over and it was giving in to rust. I had to rush out and buy a new one. Fortunately, the nearest place open had only the assembled demonstrator. So, I got it fully together and was not sorting nuts A and bolts B when they arrived. And I got a little discount for taking the demo model. That never happens, right? These same friends came to dinner a while later on a crisp, late fall day. I built a pleasant fire in the fireplace only to find that the damper attachment had come apart and the living room was filling with smoke. We managed to get it pretty well aired out by the time they came in, but there were still “smokey overtones” in the air. For a while after that, we went to their house, until a duck got caught in their chimney and their house smelled of roasting feathers.
It’s not necessarily just appliances. Oh, sure, the garage door opener will stop opening at the worst possible time – you’re on your way to a wedding. The batteries in the smoke alarms will always give out and trigger the alarm at 2 in the morning, not at a sensible daytime hour. The toilets will plug as guests are at the front door. The oven blows a heating element just as you’ve put in the Thanksgiving turkey. Your cellphone battery gives out at the moment you’re on the phone to the power company reporting an outage. Not a problem – I’ll plug it in to recharge . . . .oh, wait. I might add, storms that take down the power lines, in a time-honored tradition, invariably do so during prime time, so you’re plunged into darkness along with the cold.
So how is it that inanimate objects know just when to strike? Are those things programmed at the factory? Is there a hidden timepiece or an inner voice that, like the expiration date on a milk carton, tells it when its time is done, so “shut it down, people”? Logic tells me that’s impossible – it’s just a coincidence or part of the great, infinite obsolescence. Maybe those Maytag repair people aren’t quite as inactive as they pretend in the ads. Somehow, I’m thinking . . . . . .they know . . .
I'm Thinking...No! 