Manual Labor
Man versus newly purchased, unseemingly sleek, high-end, high-tech, high-maintenance dishwasher.
Man versus man. Man versus nature. Man versus himself.
As we learned in high school English, these are the three great themes in all literature. To which we must add one more: Man versus newly purchased, unseemingly sleek, high-end, high-tech, high-maintenance dishwasher.
Whatâs that you say? âThe Old Man and the Whirlpoolâ does not carry the same gravitas of a geezer trying to catch a marlin. That was the whole plot, right? With some metaphors thrown in?
Thatâs only because youâre not sitting next to me in my kitchen, examining, once again, a bunch of strangely slimy plates and still-milky glasses that just spent the past 90 minutes getting the wash of their lives. A wash courtesy of our new, ergonomic, European-made dishwasher with more buttons than a Met Gala topcoat and all the cleaning power of a bar of Motel 6 soap.
âRead the manual,â said my husband when I called him to complain that the dishes looked like theyâd been licked by a camel with a cold.
Read the manual? Perhaps heâd like me to perform a cornea transplant while Iâm at it. Maybe I can pop over to Russia and talk a little sense into President Putin. Did I mention this manual for this machine is 55 pages long and includes an entire section on, among other things, how to âDelay Startâ the wash cycle? Like itâs a NASA launch, and thereâs a funnel cloud headed toward Cape Canaveral?
Manuals are great for people who read manuals. I have a husband who sits down and actually absorbs the information, connecting the words to the diagram of the âmiddle spray arm,â âupper filter,â and the ârinse reservoir funnel ratâ â note to self: find glasses. Manual readers poke and prod, and suddenly, whatever theyâre working on lights up or sings in Klingon or takes off for Mallorca. Bully for them.
The other 98 percent of us open randomly to a page, see a line like, âPress and hold the 1 and 3 buttons and at the same time turn on the dishwasher with the âOnâ (15) button,â and wail in there-goes-my-marlin despair. Here. You try reading about that Delay Start feature:
âTo delay the start of the wash â or NASA launch â press the 18 button until the desired delayed start time appears in the time display. The delay start is set in one-hour steps up to nine hours. If the Delay Start button is pressed after the nine-hour mark, the delay start feature will be canceled and must be reselected.â
Copy that, Houston? I mean â writing it out, word for word, I do get the basic idea: Goof in pressing button 18 and you have to start again. I think. Yet thatâs just one tiny paragraph about one tiny button for one ridiculous feature I will never, ever use. There are still another 54.5 pages about all these OTHER features. The âoptic indicatorâ â the thing has eyes? â and the âdata plateâ â HAL. Come get your dinner. â and everyoneâs favorite, the ânon-return valve.â Donât they mean the valve of no return?
The thing is, I donât want a dishwasher that requires years of study. I donât want anything in my home that requires years of study, be it my smart TV, my digital toaster â guess which spouse bought that â or my masterâs degree. I got one of those in less time than it is taking me to calm down about this stupid non-washing dishwasher.
And manual.
When the toaster-buying, dishwasher-decider-in-chief arrived home, he thumbed through the 55-page marriage-destroyer and discovered the problem. I hadnât put in precisely the right amount of detergent: Two flat tablespoons. No more, no less.
How could I have missed the âAdding Detergentâ instructions? There they are, just 28 fascinating pages in. Right after the marlin eats the old man and licks his bones clean.
Next time, when I choose the dishwasher, I know what Iâm going to get.
A marlin.
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