Dooce - Queen of the Blogeratti

I want to be Dooce today. 

Not for her mad photography skills, expansive kitchen, hot handy husband, Forbes ranking or millions of faithful readers. 

I want to be Dooce, Queen of the Blogeratti, because I want my new dishwasher. NOW!

Heather Armstrong, creator of the insanely popular blog, Dooce, caused an Internet kerfuffle a few weeks back when she made public - very, very public - her bad experience - very, very bad - with a Maytag washing machine.

She told her million or so followers on Twitter not to buy a Maytag. Then she told them again and again and again. Five times in 16 minutes. I'm guessing it was the worst 16 minutes of publicity the company ever got. 

Critics pounced immediately and cursed Dooce for abusing her position, for airing her dirty laundry in such an aggressive way. 

I never understood the criticism.

I don't Twitter but I don't live under a rock either. I know how popular it is, how powerful it can be. I saw how Iranians used it to spread news in the bloody aftermath of their disputed elections.

And I saw how one person - albeit one very prominent person - used it to hold a corporation accountable. 

Dooce tried for weeks to get her expensive new washing machine to work like a $1,300 new washing machine should. But all she got was piss-poor service, delays and attitude. 

Guess what happened after she shouted from the Twittertops? 

She got multiple offers from big name appliance stores to fix her machine; a phone call from an executive at Whirlpool, which owns Maytag; and a free washing machine from Bosch that she steered toward a women's shelter instead. 

(oh, and she finally got the machine fixed)

That's the kind of boo-yah I could use to finally get the dishwasher I bought nearly three weeks ago. 

Way back then, it seems like so long ago now, our current washer broke after weeks, months even, of failing health. It sounded like a jet engine for a while every time we turned it on. Like National Airport moved its runway two miles down the road. To our back yard!

Then it started putting out the suspicious smell of smoking rubber. 

Life with four kids, though, means there's never any time to call for a repair. Hell, even if I had called I wouldn't have been able to hear the person on the other end of the phone. It's nearly impossible to speak to anyone anymore when my kids are around. I try to hide in closets. The connection falters. My baby stalks me. It doesn't work.

So, we let the machine rumble and sputter until it died. 

The day it did I went directly to Home Depot as soon as Kent got home. And I bought a replacement. 

I didn't want to faff about trying to get the old one fixed. That would take forever, I reasoned. 

Except, after I spent 20, maybe 30 minutes, going through the order process (there was confusion about prices and sales and what have you) the incredibly kind saleslady informed me that it would be a week before it could be delivered. 

We just spent a long time working out the sale and she actually helped me get a lower price. I still had not eaten dinner and my reserves were failing, so I sighed, then said 'OK.'

One week without a dishwasher. Four kids. A birthday party in between. I'm not gonna lie. It was a hassle. But bearable. 

So I was pretty darn excited when delivery day dawned. Desmond and Josephine were excited too and jumped on to the chairs at the front window to watch the machine get unloaded from the truck. 

Not so fast though. The installer did some poking around and discovered that our current machine was installed improperly. We needed side brackets - or something - to hold the new machine in place. He didn't have any with him. 

I nearly wept as they loaded my new machine back on to the delivery truck. 

The installer told me I was in luck, though. The parts were in the warehouse and the machine would be back in two days. Two days later. No machine. 

Kent tried to make some calls this weekend. He was also trying to get the four kids corralled and out of the house for play time. He walked from room to room putting on shoes, filling Sippy cups, bagging treats and breaking up fights -- all while holding his cell phone. 

(I was trying to get the house cleaned and ready for our second party without a dishwasher.)

My favorite part of the conversation I overheard went something like this: 

"Don't put me on hold. Don't put me on hold! DON'T PUT ME ON HOLD!"

They put him on hold anyway. 

He finally left his phone number with someone and demanded they call him back. They did. But we were throwing a party, cleaning up, getting people to bed and crashing ourselves. 

Kent woke up at the crack of dawn the next day and swam 1.5 K, biked 40K and ran 10K in the Nation's Triathlon while I took care of the tribe. We didn't retrieve the message until Monday. 

On Tuesday, Kent arm wrestled unhelpful store clerks over the phone and managed a new delivery date.

But I may not make it until then. In fact, I may be knocked dead by the rancid smell wafting from the old dishwasher. I couldn't detect the source of the horrid odor at first. I thought Tobias' filled his diaper with vile. I thought soiled ruins were in the trash can. I sniffed about the kitchen and wondered if the bread was molding or if the fruit bowl was moved and replaced with an open sewer. 

Then I put my nose to the dishwasher and made the colossal mistake of opening it. 

BAM!

The smell, oh my God, the smell. 

Even with the door affixed tightly, it lingers. In my upper nostrils, where I smell it constantly. And I have to smell it for the hours, days, weeks it takes me to stand at the sink and wash a day's worth of crummy dishes, milk crusted Sippy cups, beer glasses, wine glasses, cereal bowls, and everything else four kids and two adults use. 

The smell is making me more insane than the chaotic mess of seeing the Sears Tower of Dishes rise daily from my sink. 

The delivery folks say they're coming tomorrow. If they don't, I'm calling Dooce. And her hot husband.  

Comments

[Bobbi]

Oh mon dieu!! The laundry here is also a nightmare! I feel your pain. I miss my fancy machine likely washing perfectly in Canada as I type!

B