Define "Broken"

Because there was absolutely no way I could fully express my frustration in a short Facebook status update, I turn back to my old friend Blogger. The title of this particular post? Something my landlord just said to me over the phone with regards to our dishwasher. Before I get ahead of myself let's recap for those that have not seen my posts through Facebook.

About two weeks ago... no wait. I have to start even earlier than that. Over a year ago, when we first moved in our landlords kept going on and on about how they had just put a new dishwasher in and wasn't that just great? They seemed overly proud of it in fact. Don't get me wrong. I was very happy to move into a place with a dishwasher, I think it's a dandy appliance, it was just odd how they kept on mentioning it to us. That and the brand new front door they put in. They're proud of weird things. Anyhoodle, we moved in and the dishwasher was great, it did in fact cleaned our dishes. Then, about a month or so ago our dishes stopped getting clean. It was subtle at first, our glasses came out with a kind of film on them so I bought that Jet Dry stuff. No help. Then I noticed our silverware wasn't getting clean. Then from there nothing was getting clean. I kid you not, I can put a mug that was used for coffee (something that I can rinse under the faucet and have it look relatively clean) in there and it will come out with the coffee still in it. And yet I didn't call the landlords about it. For several reasons really; life is stressful, they kind of intimidate me, I hate confrontation, and I worried they wouldn't believe me since it is a "new" dishwasher.

So, about two weeks ago I was running a load of dishes, fully aware that about 75% of them would be coming out dirty, when I smelled smoke. I came out of the baby's room and saw a stream of smoke coming out of our dishwasher. I quickly opened the washer up and as smoke billowed out I made sure there were no actual flames that needed to be put out. As smoke filled the air, I quickly ran to our sliding glass door to air our place out before our alarms could go off. Back to the washer I went. The smoke was dissipating and I could see we were in no imminent danger so I calmly sent Husband a message on messenger telling him what happened. "Call the landlords." Ummm, hint, hint, honey-pie, I want you to do call them, not me! No dice though. I was forced to make the call as Husband was actually at work and had work calls to make. Bummer.

So, I called them and explained the situation and they said they would send Dan the Handyman by to take a look. Dan the Handyman is just a general handyman kind of guy. So far he's repaired the faucets in our bathroom, replaced out water heater after that caught on fire (yep, that's now two fires we didn't cause in our place) and done a few other small tasks here and there. So he came over the next day and the first thing he asks after hearing my tale? "Are you sure it was smoke? You know these things can let off a lot of steam." Um, thanks Dan the Handyman for implying that I'm such a moron that I can't tell the difference between smoke and steam. I informed him that unless steam smells like burning food and can set off smoke detectors I was pretty sure it was in fact smoke. So he continued his inspection and left telling me he couldn't find anything wrong with it.

The next day I got a call from the husband part of our landlord duo and he informed me that they couldn't find anything wrong and he had bought some stuff for us to treat our water (we have hard water) and he would bring it by when he got around to it. No mention of the fact that it had smoke coming out of it. It must be the hard water. End of conversation. Several more days went by and I finally asked Husband to contact them. Sometimes, as unfair as it is, people take men more seriously. Especially people like my landlords. I'm pretty sure no one would have asked Husband if he had mistaken steam for smoke! Anyway, so Husband called and a few minutes later I received a call from the wife part of our landlord duo. She told me repeatedly that I probably just needed to soak my dishes, and get special soap, and pre-wash them. I informed her that I do in fact soak/rinse my dishes, that my habits with regards to doing the dishes has not changed since we moved in. The washer used to get our dishes clean and now it doesn't. That, to me, does not equal a functioning dishwasher. Finally she agreed to send out an actual appliance repair guy.

Sooo, last Tuesday Appliance Mike came to take a look. At first he tried to sell me on the idea that we needed to use better soap, but after I showed him some dishes that had been run through our washer and were clearly still dirty he decided to actually try to run the machine himself. After running it and opening it mid-cycle several times he said "well, there's your problem... it isn't spraying water." He informed me it needed a new motor. He would be in contact with my landlords and then get back to me. That was Tuesday. Today, Friday, I had still not heard from anyone, neither Appliance Mike, nor the Landlord Duo, so I mustered all my courage (God how I hate confrontation) and called the husband landlord. After explaining that we had had a repair man out who had informed me that our washer was in fact broken, he said, "You had a repair man out??" I said, "Well, no, we didn't, your wife sent one here." "Oh well she didn't tell me, what did he say?" I informed him that the repair man said the washer was broken so I was just wondering when it was going to be fixed. His response? "Well, define "broken." WTF? It's broken! As in does not work. Ceases to function! It is built to clean dishes and it does not do its job. What I actually said was that the repair man told me it does not spray water and needs a new motor. Long story short(er) he tried to tell the other repair guy said it was fine so it must be fine. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks as I said "Look, it had smoke coming out of it and on top of that it does not get our dishes clean. At this point I am having to hand wash all of our dishes and that just isn't acceptable to me." He couldn't have hung up the phone faster. He told me he would call his wife and hung up.

Several minutes later my phone rang and the wife was on the other end. She let me know that she would be coming by to take a look for herself (as if she could see something Appliance Mike couldnt??). I quickly ran around try to make our place look like a bomb didn't just go off and she showed up at the door about twenty minutes later. She looked around my kitchen (dishes soaking in the sink) and said "well you really can't run dirty dishes like that through the washer, they won't get clean. I have to practically pre-wash my dishes first. I said "right, I'm soaking those so I can wash them by hand later. I'm not going to put them in the washer there's no point since it doesn't work." I showed her a pot that had been run through and how it was still dirty. She didn't believe me. She told me that if dishwasher runs then it has to work. It either works or it doesn't. (Um, ok...) Then she asked if it fills with water properly. I said yes. Then she asked if it drained properly. I said yes. Triumphantly she exclaimed, "Then it works!" As calmly as possible I said, "No. It does NOT work. Yes it may run through the cycle (rinse, wash, rinse, drain - or whatever), but it does NOT spray water. The repair man told me it does not spray water so our dishes will NOT EVER get clean. It NEEDS A NEW MOTOR!" She gave one last ditch effort at telling me I need to pre-wash my dishes, all dishwashers are that way, blah blah blah. I told her for the fifty billionth time that it used to get our dishes clean and now it does not. I have not changed my habits the dishwasher has therefore the problem lies with the machine not me. Then I told her what I've been wanting to say all along, which is that we would not have rented a place without a functioning dishwasher and we need this to be fixed. All dejected she said "Well, I'll have to think about it." and left.

So, that's it. She's going to "think about it" while I stand around hand washing our piles and piles of dirty dishes. Husband says if they don't do anything about it we will just get it repaired on our own and deduct. I'm still hoping that they step up and do their job so we don't have to do that, but I'm not holding my breath.

P.S. I'm betting there are a million typos but I don't have time to edit right now. I have to wash some dishes so I can make dinner. Then I have to wash the dishes again.