I mean, who does that? Who takes the top rack from a dishwasher – in an office?
We recently moved offices. Anyone who has ever done so is already sympathizing with us. Actually, it hasn’t been that bad – once we found flooring to cover the bare boards on the floor and got the whole “tan” (a nice word for it) walls and ceiling painted a warm white, the place began to take shape. We even got some really fantastic matching, gently used, furniture from an oil company that, sadly, didn’t need it anymore.
But imagine my reaction when, during an inspection of the kitchen, I discovered that someone had taken the top rack out of the dishwasher.
A quick call to the landlord confirmed the appliances came “as is.” Well, since the previous tenants had taken the fridge and the microwave, too, I suppose that was no surprise. I undertook to replace the rack – it went along with my “I’ll do the IKEA and WalMart runs to kit out the kitchen” thing.
A call to some appliance parts stores located two racks at a store in north Calgary. I turned a trip to the northwest for a dentist appointment into a trip to the northeast to pick one up. For $186 plus tax, I ordered one to be delivered to a south Calgary store – because, no, indeed the north store didn’t have two – the even-further north distribution centre had them and I didn’t have time to get there before the close of business.
Don’t tell the boss, but I took an extra bit of time on my lunch hour to go and pick up the rack from the south store and arrived at the office to install it before the dirty lunch dishes needed to be loaded.
It didn’t fit.
Help from a very handy colleague arrived. It still didn’t fit.
And, yada, yada, yada . . . the parts we need to make it fit – and roll in and out – are going to cost a further $365. The required parts now total $551.
So, now I know. I know now that very smart people take the top rack out of a dishwasher. Somewhere, there is a thriving black market in dishwasher racks. Does anyone have a contact?
And here’s the whole point of this story. We have to make changes in the way we think about appliance parts. I’m serious. The likely end to this story is that we purchase a new dishwasher. For a couple of hundred dollars more than what it would cost to replace the top rack in the working dishwasher we already have, we can buy a brand new, warrantied, perfectly suitable, wash-the-coffee cups-and-lunch plates dishwasher.
And, no doubt, the old one will end up in appliance heaven at the Calgary landfill.
We’ve all done it. We’ve all replaced something that was otherwise perfectly fine, because one part of it didn’t work any more. We’ve all been told it was cheaper to buy a new one than the part to fix it – or almost cheaper. From hair dryers, to fridges, our landfills are filling up with only slightly broken appliances.
I wonder, when will we stop accepting that built-in obsolescence is good for the economy? When will we as consumers fight back? When will manufacturers figure out a new business model?
I figure it will happen when we all really get serious about the environment. We all say we already are. But, the trouble is, none of us wants to go first.
– Janet Lane is Director of the Centre for Human Capital Policy