The dishwasher wouldn’t work!
I loaded up the thing, put in the little square dishwasher soap packet, ran the water in the sink until it was warm, shut the dishwasher door, and pushed “Start.” And heard it start. As I passed by occasionally, every few minutes over the next half-hour or so, sometimes it seemed to be making a different sort of noise, not necessarily a bad noise, just a different-ish sort of noise. But I don’t spend much of its cycle time sitting beside it, noticing the various sounds it makes, so I didn’t really think anything was amiss. When I walked by and noticed that the “it’s done” light was on, I opened it up to let the dishes air dry. I saw that the food drips that had been on the door when I closed the machine were still pretty much on the door when I re-opened it. it. I picked up a few dishes, and oh, no, they were not clean at all.
I looked down at the soap dispenser. It was open and empty (as it should be at the end of a cycle), and wondered, “Did I forget to put the soap in? Is that why the dishes didn’t get clean?” So, I put a soap packet in, closed the soap dispenser door, closed the dishwasher door, ran the water in the sink until it was warm, and punched “Start.” I waited a few minutes, then opened the door. The soap dispenser door had opened and the little soap packet was sitting down in the corner of the machine, along with what I had not noticed before: the first soap packet, undissolved and unused. And most importantly, there was no cascade of water dripping down the dishes, as there usually is when I open the thing in mid-cycle to put in something I had neglected to put in at the beginning. No water in the dishwasher. I moaned and fussed. Actually it was more like that “ARRRRRGGGGHH” that Charlie Brown used to say in the Peanuts comic strip. Friday afternoon! Can’t possibly get anyone here! Don’t want to pay overtime for a Saturday visit! Who knows what it will cost anyway? Is it worth fixing? Will we have to get a new one? It’s only 8 years old! What would a new one cost? How much should we be willing to pay for a repair? Would it be more cost effective to get a new one? And the worst part is: NOW I’M GOING TO HAVE TO HAND WASH THESE DISHES!!
So, I pulled everything from the dishwasher, ran a sink full of hot water, and washed the dishes. From April, 1971, when I moved into our first apartment until November, 2006, when we moved into this house, we only lived in one place, an apartment, for almost 2 years, that had a dishwasher. The rest of the time, I hand-washed dishes. I AM TIRED OF WASHING DISHES!
Over the weekend (and I don’t ordinarily cook, at all, on weekends, therefore not making many dirty dishes, because you can put things like toast and sandwiches on paper towels), I looked online for repair people and phoned a guy Monday morning. He arrived, early afternoon, and I described what happened. He opened the dishwasher door, sat down on the floor, and peered in. He reached inside and pulled a dinner fork from the bottom and handed it to me.
“Oh, thanks,” I said. Things fall to the bottom sometimes, usually plastic measuring spoons, because they’re so lightweight, sometimes a stainless spoon or fork. I put the fork in the sink and looked back at the repair guy. He shrugged his shoulders and hands at me.
“Is that it?” I said, astonished.
“That’s it,” he said.
Re-enactment of the “fork in the dishwasher” problem
It seems that there’s this float sort of thing at the right-hand front of the machine (and I hope I’m explaining this right). As the dishwasher fills with water, the float rises. When it gets to a certain point, that tells the dishwasher that there’s enough water and to stop putting more water in. It seems that the fork had fallen to the bottom and somehow lodged itself so that the float was all the way up, therefore communicating to the dishwasher: “No more water needed in here!” And so no water came in.
Diagnosis for dishwasher malfunction: There was a fork.
I am telling you this so that you will know to check the bottoms of your dishwashers, if they’re not working right, to be sure there’s not a fork down there, causing a problem. I’m telling you this for free.
Me? I had to pay $59.00.
Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
Proverbs 4:25 English Standard Version (ESV)
I know that this verse refers to larger things in life than how dishes get cleaned. Probably. But I also know that PAYING ATTENTION can keep little irritations in life from bringing us down, faster than we realize. So, I’m going to let you write your own sermonette here, about being more focused, so you don’t make stupid mistakes.