Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

Pronounce It

After losing three major appliances in the last eight months, I have come to the conclusion that appliance repairman is no longer a functioning job title.

I think the proper title is appliance coroner.

It has been my experience that appliances can no longer be repaired, the people who come to repair them are there to pronounce them dead. Their job isn’t to toss a new motor in your dishwasher, throw a new belt on your washer or clean the monster lint bunnies out of your dryer, but to give you a cause of death and tell you it’s time to pull the plug.

I came to this conclusion when the latest team of repairmen came to our house to examine the remains of our latest unresponsive appliance – the dishwasher.

They walked in the kitchen, quickly secured the scene and got to work methodically plotting out exactly what had caused our Maytag to collapse in mid-rinse.

For our part, my husband and I stood over them asking questions – hoping somehow they would push the right button or bump it in just the right place and it would give a little cough and begin splashing our dishes clean once again.

Instead, they started to rip the poor thing apart.

It was the same story with the washer. The microwave they pronounced dead over the phone.

As the repair team removed parts large and small, they examined them and commented on each one while my husband and I listened whether that was the apparent cause of death.

“Look at that!” said one repair guy to the other as he pulled a piece of bone from what looked like a pump. “That’s one clean little bone? Could that have done it?”

“Nah!” said the other as he went elbow deep into our dishwasher’s innards.

It was a little like watching Dr. G: Medical Examiner with wrenches instead of scalpels.

They flipped it on every side, tore off the front panel and showed me parts I didn’t know a dishwasher had.

In the end, they put everything back together and gave my husband the bad news. (By then, I’d left the room fully not wanting to see them pull out a little scale and start weighing vital dishwasher organs for the official report.)

Our dishwasher was pronounced dead at 10:32 a.m. Its little motor just gave out. Nothing could be done to save it.

For the past 16 years, since we grew up, got married and started buying appliances of our own, my husband and I have heard the bad news many times and been comforted by numerous repair guys. They’ve told us it wasn’t our fault, some appliances aren’t made to be repaired, every appliance has to go sometime.

In all those years, I think we’ve had exactly two repair calls that resulted in good outcomes. I think the repair guys were surprised, scrambling to shift gears from appliance CSI to appliance EMT.

Now after pricing and reluctantly buying three new appliances in the last eight months, I think I have another title the appliance CSI/EMTs can add to their business cards – Appliance Purchase Grief Counselors.

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