After a few months of my dishwasher not working as it should, I insisted we get a new one. I had done all the things I could think of to improve its function, including cleaning around the disgusting soap scum slime-covered seal and running the rinse cycle with an assload of white vinegar. Nothing worked, including the washer itself. It had a good run, having been with us for 8 years and who knows how long before we bought the house. Plus, it was black, and I don’t want to sound racist, but I wanted it to match my newer stainless steel kitchen appliances, although why I don’t know because all of them have a crime scene’s worth of fingerprints and smudges, none of which were noticeable on my vintage 90’s dishwasher.
We needed to pick out a replacement dishwasher. There is no
such thing as an impulse purchase in my house because my spouse is one of those
researcher kinds of guys. Instead, there
are months of review browsing and comparison shopping and debating and weighing
of pros and cons. I generally don’t get too involved in his process. I don’t
have strong feelings one way or the other. I just don’t want to hand wash my
dishes. I want a machine that does it for me with minimal noise and no weird
chalky film on everything. He looks at the bigger picture, the energy
efficiency and internal capacity and a bunch of other crap I would never think
to investigate because I just don’t want to hand wash my dishes.
After careful review, he selected a Bosch unit, last year’s
model that was on sale at a national home improvement retailer. He ordered it
online and made arrangements for installation after it arrived at the local
store. Yay, right?
Last week, the dude came to the house with the new washer.
He must have been an independent contractor that works with the store because
he showed up in his old minivan with a new washer in the back, which looked a
little shady. He came in and was polite and all that stuff, asking for an old
towel and for one of us to turn off the power at the breaker box before he
removed the old, malfunctioning washer. A trail of water, nay, tears, was left
across my hardwoods as he rolled it out to his creepy van where I am sure
others have also been left to die. When
he came back in with the new one, he got down to the installation part of the
work order. I had to leave as the car pool line was calling my name, but my
husband stayed home to provide any assistance and also to surf on his laptop.
When I returned home with a child, the van was gone and my
husband was waiting for me at the door.
“Guess what?” he said.
I wanted to be positive, but I know tone, and I was positive that was not a good guess what.
“What?” I said, bracing myself.
“He installed the wrong fucking dishwasher! It’s a Whirlpool, not a Bosch. It’s not even a good one. I looked online and it’s way cheaper than the one we ordered. Plus, it’s a piece of crap. It’s all plastic inside. Can you believe that shit?”
In fact, I could not believe that shit. That shit was downright unbelievable. I am still convinced
it was a bait and switch.
My husband got on the phone and had an argument with the customer service lady who insisted that the only way to resolve the problem was to have a work order to remove the wrong washer, then reorder the correct one and wait for it to arrive for installation. He insisted that we would not be without a dishwasher while she corrected the problem, and then he insisted that he needed a supervisor because he wasn’t wasting his time on someone with no authority.
After that, he spoke with the manager at the local store who
verified they did have the washer and would have it installed when it could be
arranged, in about a day or two. Only that turned into another long wait
because the store never arranged it with the local contractor with the serial
killer van. It felt less and less like a mistake.
At the end of the week, my husband followed up again with the manager, who did an excellent imitation of a person shocked at his employee’s piss poor customer service skills. And today, the installer was back around lunchtime with the Bosch.
He unhooked the loaner dishwasher and dragged its cheap ass
out to the van, then brought in the correct machine and commenced installation.
He was down on the floor lying on an old
towel and sweating profusely and looking around and rearranging hoses and
finally got up and went to make a phone call outside. When he came back inside,
he announced that the machine did not fit. It wasn’t his fault or the washer’s
fault or even my husband’s fault. It was because of the metal anchor strip
attached to the top of the unit. It was exactly one quarter inch too tall to
squeeze into the allotted space.
Apparently, our countertop doesn’t have the normal kind of support;
it has a thick wooden beam that takes up a quarter of inch too much
motherfucking space. The technician said he wasn’t authorized to continue
because he was concerned if he forced it, it would crack the granite countertop.
Our options were to contact a carpenter or…
My husband took a look at the wood and said,” Couldn’t you
just chisel out a little sliver and it would fit?”
The technician said, “In theory, yes. But I can’t do it.”
They devised a plan. My husband would cut out the quarter
inch from the beam, and the technician would come back tomorrow and try again,
if he could fit it into his schedule.
So here I am, hiding in my office because the noise from the
grinding thing is horrible, like a wounded cat ready to fight to the death. I’m
not the only one who thinks so. My cat, Yoko, also thought it sounded vaguely
threatening. She just attacked my husband, claws out, grabbing him on the back
of the leg and scratching and biting the fuck out of him. Unfortunately, I didn’t
witness the assault, but I did hear him scream, which freaked me out something
fierce. It’s always scary when a man who works with his hands for a living
yells his head off while working with power tools. Yoko is with me, trying to
calm down. I am nursing a tension headache brought on by jaw clenching and Dremel vibrations.
And in the kitchen sink are all the dinner dishes, waiting
to be hand washed, because all I wanted was a new dishwasher.
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