A lovely way to spend my birthday money...

I was going to write about this yesterday but for some reason it was a lot less funny then.

A little more than a week ago as I was unloading the dishwasher, (Ahem…not my job. I pay a six year old to do this and her father is her backup…but I digress.) I found that the lid for my crock pot was missing part of its plastic handle. I searched the bottom of my dishwasher for the piece, but never found it. The next time I ran the dishwasher it had acquired a lovely grinding sound during one of the cycles. Yikes! I told Darren about it and casually mentioned that we should take it apart to get the plastic out. I am pretty sure at that point that my husband felt the heebie jeebies coming on. Some of you may be surprised to find out that I consider myself a do it yourselfer. Oh not the Toolbelt Diva kind. Just the kind who, if it’s possible to do it myself and not have to pay someone else, I’m game. I lovingly blame my work ethic on my parents.

Anyway…a day or two later I decided my dear husband didn’t think I was serious and so at 10pm I decided to look into taking it apart myself. It went something like this… take out the rack, unscrew the funny cap, take the ring off, now the arm that sprays water, another ring, find a screwdriver and the right bit, take out eight screws – there goes the first one, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth – oops! I dropped that eighth screw down into the back of the dishwasher. I can’t see it or feel it but I know it’s there. Well I’ll just retrieve it when I get this filter off. I am now to a black round twirly thing with a bolt in the middle. Every time I try to budge the bolt, the whole thing twirls round and round.


I’m a girl…I’m stumped.


I call in reinforcements. That’s why I’m married you know – access to that second opinion.


Well my second opinion is tired, grumpy and wondering why I thought I should start this project at 10pm and involve him a half hour later. He gets up at 5:30 in the morning for work and this wasn’t on his agenda for the evening. He looks at it, I tell him where I am at with it (I may have left out the part about the dropped screw), and proceeds to grumble some more about it. At that point I tell him I am perfectly capable of figuring it out myself, he is uninvited to the party. A few more grumbles from both of us are exchanged before he asks me where the owner’s manual for it is. I found it and he poured over it. I still haven’t told him about the screw. There were no more instructions to help us get it any further on taking it apart, but my husband found a small line under troubleshooting that reads:

NOISES
Grinding, grating, crunching or buzzing sounds
A hard object has entered the wash module (on some models). When the object is ground up, the sound should stop.

He hands me the manual with a triumphant smile and starts to stand up. I realize the time has finally come to mention the tiny little detail about the screw. “Ummm, honey, I think that will definitely work for the piece of plastic, but I am unsure how long it will take to grind up the screw I dropped in while trying to take it apart. His reaction I’ll leave to the imagination. But the grumbles were totally justified on his part now and we both knew it. Ah man I hate it when that happens. You know, being wrong.


The night ended badly. I proceeded to tell him again how uninvited he was and then for an hour and a half tried to figure out how to get that screw out. I knew it had to be just sitting there. I tried crawling into the dumb thing to see it. No luck. Somewhere around 11:15 I decided if I could see where it was I could probably reach it with tweezers. I went into my room to get my camera.







I know some of you at this point are like, “Camera? What the heck? GET A MIRROR!” I did eventually but only about 15 minutes and some prayers later. Hey it was late okay? Unfortunately it was the smallest handheld mirror they make. I could see the screw - it was over a bit from where I thought - but it was there. Now picture me crawling into the dishwasher, holding a hundred pound maglite flashlight, itty bitty mirror and tweezers. I called for Darren three times, but he was a no show, so I went on with the procedure myself. Prop the flashlight…no…prop the mirror…no…crawl in on the other side of the door…no…prop everything…hold your breath…easy now…easy now…Got it!...Oh crap!...noooooooo… Now I can’t see it at all. I’m frustrated, but no way is this machine going to see me cry. It’s midnight. I closed the door and went to bed.

The next day I called the tech line at Whirlpool. . . . . . . . . A girl. . . . . . . They have a girl at the end of the line!?! SERIOUSLY? Ohhh-kaaay. I told her the problem and asked her if she could tell me how to get the filter off. There has to be a way. Ummm….nope. Not in her manual either. “But I can give you the name of an authorized service company.” Oh yes…I’m sure you can, and thanks, thanks for your help.

I sucked it up and called them. Sixty-five dollars for a technician to come out and diagnose the problem. Diagnose? What the crap? I already know what’s wrong with it and no, they don’t have anyone who can tell you anything over the phone either. Sixty-five dollars and a weeks worth of dishpan hands– wow, that bites. Time to tell Darren. I’m a chicken – I tell him through an email. We’re a pair - he apologizes for the night before in the reply.

Fast forward a week to yesterday. My time slot for the repair is 8am-12pm. The repairman calls at 12:15 to get directions and tell me he will be here in 45 minutes. When he got here the boys were asleep so he had my full attention. I told him the problem and then he went to work on his fancy laptop trying to figure out what to charge me for. He can’t start the job without naming the job. We both stood there and looked at all of the options. Nothing describes removing the filter. We finally settled on drain clean. He goes to work while I hold the flashlight. I watch in slow motion as that tech puts a wrench on the twirly thing to hold it still while he undoes the bolt. My head was screaming, “Stop! I’m a dork! I’ve got it from here! Take your $65 and get outta here!” My mouth said, “Huh…a wrench to hold it still…didn’t even cross my mind.” The rest of the 30 minutes went like this. Take out bolt and lift off black twirly thing, undo four screws, lift off filter. Oh, two hungry hippo balls, a cherry pit, the piece of plastic from the lid and of course…the screw. Replace filter, huh how does this go on? I showed him that it had a notch and so had to be lined up a certain way. He told me they were hiring. Put back four screws, replace black twirly thing, get wrench, hold tight and put back bolt. Replace part with the 8 screws. I untied baggie that held seven of them and explained that I hate losing parts and do this even though it makes my husband crazy. He told me they had two women working for them and the small hands make for getting the job done faster. They have part time positions available. Replace ring, sprayer, other ring, and funny cap. Write the check. Here’s the receipt.




$153.00 to remove five screws. That’s $30 per screw. That, my friends, is one expensive piece of humble pie.