first-world problems

by

Unexpected Microwave

My microwave broke, so I had to buy a new one.

That sentence right there conveys absolutely none of the dismay and panic I felt. Plus, it makes it sound like the microwave just up and expired, all by its lonesome, when really I BROKE IT. I BROKE MY MICROWAVE. DURING A PANDEMIC.

Yesterday, I opened the microwave to remove something I’d heated and THE DOOR BROKE. Right there in my hand. The bottommost panel of the microwave door, right beneath the handel, separated from the rest of the door. And the door would no longer close and also started to feel quite loose on its hinge.

Listen, I am already dealing with an Ongoing Refrigerator Saga, which I will probably tell you about at some point but which causes me TORRENTIAL FRUSTRATION, and I cannot – CANNOT – deal with fiddling around with another appliance. The fridge is too costly to replace (if I even could, during a pandemic, when appliances are in SHORT SUPPLY) and also, it – SO FAR – maintains the minimum functions required of a fridge, like “holding food” and “cooling things” and “producing ice.” This could change at any moment, I recognize, and I am fervently grateful for the second fridge we have downstairs. (Yes, yes, these are Not Problems type of problems, I am aware.)

(Side Vent: In the nine years we have occupied this house, we have bought a new fridge and oven/range, replaced the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, three faucets [kitchen, bathroom, laundry room], a shower head, the water heater, two trees, and a toilet. We should also possibly replace the windows. And now the microwave. And also the fridge sucks and if I had a spare $$$ lying around I would definitely replace that. I am grateful that a) this didn’t happen all at once and b) we had the means to do so without significant financial strain, but OMG is this normal??? I have never owned a house before so maybe gradually replacing everything is just what it means to be a homeowner but it seems like a lot!)

Anyway. Speaking of Not Problems problems. No one needs a microwave. I mean, I guess if you live in a house with no other means of heating your food, then a microwave is a necessity. So I will backtrack and say: I personally do not need a microwave. It is a nicety. A luxury appliance. But nonetheless, I have always been in possession of a microwave and therefore much of my cooking/eating life has been arranged around the fact of a working microwave. For instance, my daughter eats pancakes that I microwave for her almost every morning. (Yes, I could make pancakes from scratch every morning, as Carla and my inner Snarky Pinterest Mom so helpfully and logically pointed out, but I am not going to do that.) We can survive without a microwave. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t have a microwave, after all, and, in fact, would look askance – deeply askance – at me for my microwave dependency. 

And yet I went to my local appliance store this morning, ten minutes before it opened, for the express purpose of buying a new microwave. 

I have heard rumblings about the appliance shortages that have arisen during the pandemic. And let me tell you, this is REAL. Even though it is a random Monday, and even though I had arrived ten minutes early, I was only the fifth or so person inside the store, and the parking lot was filling up behind me. There were no available salespeople on the floor when I went in; they were all talking to customers. So I stood there stupidly, trying to project an air of I Should Be Helped Next as another customer entered the store and made her way to the part of the store where additional staff members were busily not looking at us. 

Near me was a customer looking at dishwashers. “I really recommend you get one of the machines we have in stock here in the store,” the salesperson was telling her apologetically. “Otherwise, it could be at least six to eight weeks before you get yours.” 

I looked toward the checkout area, a long desk at the far end of the showroom behind which are several offices with doorless doorways that open into the showroom itself. I was staring because not a single one of the six or seven people in those offices was wearing a mask. This included two people who were in the showroom, talking on the phone. I had a moment of panic – I should leave, right? How can they not be wearing masks? Have they not heard about the pandemic? But… there was a sign on the door saying masks were required, so… perhaps they don’t understand that staff should wear masks, too?

“… yep, already full and people staring at me,” said the unmasked salesman into the phone, making eye contact with me. Then, as the woman who’d come in behind me made a beeline for him, he hung up and pointed at me. “How can I help you?”

Staying where I was, in the middle of the store, while he put on a mask, I called to him that I needed a new microwave. He made some pretense of showing me the microwave floor models, mumbling all the while that he didn’t think they had any of these ones, or these ones… and then he kind of threw up his hands and said, “crazy, crazy times” and we quickly returned to his computer station where he looked up whether he actually had any microwaves in stock. 

This is where I told him that I’d looked on the store’s website, which had claimed to have a specific GE model in stock. We would take that one, I said. He typed on his keyboard. Then he went into the back to look at what was available.

He returned, shaking his head. “I don’t have any of that model in stock,” he said. “I can sell you one, and order it, but honestly, I have no earthly idea when it will arrive. We aren’t even getting estimates for timeframes anymore. I could do the same with a Whirlpool microwave, but honestly, they’re even worse than GE.”

Was I going to have to go somewhere else to buy a microwave? Would Best Buy or Home Depot have any better selection? I was starting to feel anxious about the possibility – this store is close to my house and has a relationship with a reputable installation service and we’ve used them for ALL our appliances, so I feel comfortable with them. Plus, I like supporting a local company. But now I pictured schlepping all over town trying to find a stupid microwave that wouldn’t take an indefinite amount of time to arrive, being turned away from store after store by harried staff members trying to fight against the desperate crush of appliance-hungry customers. 

“I mean, we probably do have a few options here in the store, but they start getting really expensive.”

Turns out, internet, I would rather go without a microwave than spend $800 on one. I kind of stared at the salesman, thinking about my new, austere, microwave-free lifestyle. Perhaps I would write a book about it. A how-to guide of sorts: MicroWAVE Your Old Food Heating Habits Goodbye. Maybe I would need to buy a toaster oven. Could I really see myself becoming a Toaster Oven Person?

He interpreted my reverie as pleading, and kept typing. I have no idea what he was doing. He could have been making a grocery list. Or writing his own tell-all about the Great Appliance Panic of 2020. Maybe he was journalling. “November 16, 2020: Dear Diary. Another day of people needing new refrigerators. Why have all the refrigerators in the country simultaneously failed? Another day of my colleagues pretending that there is a forcefield separating the air of the offices from the air of the showroom. Another day of customers looking at me as though they can manifest a non-existent appliance through the power of staring.”

Miraculously, through the magic of my unfocused stare, he discovered that he had, in the warehouse, a very basic GE that would work as a replacement for my microwave. “It doesn’t do much more than heat,” he said regretfully. “But there is a button to stop the turntable from turning if you want that.” (Why would I want that? Why would anyone want that? Isn’t giving your leftover soup a spin around the ol’ heat carousel the whole point of a microwave?)

“Great,” I told him, microwave relief flooding me. “I am fine with basic.” I need a microwave that can heat my food and maybe act as a timer, that’s it. What kind of functions are these $800 microwaves performing that are so much better? Setting the table? Complimenting your cooking? Chewing the food for you? Heat the food. Beep when it’s done. That’s all I need from a microwave. 

The salesman gestured to the floor model of the microwave he’d located so I could examine it, check the price, etc. “It’s fine,” I said, giving it a cursory glance to ensure it wasn’t $800 (turns out it was even less than the option I’d scouted online), and handing over my credit card with the barely controlled panic of someone finding the country’s very last Tickle Me Elmo on Christmas Eve during a year when Tickle Me Elmo is the Country’s Hottest Toy. 

“I’m just glad you had something to sell me,” I told him. 

“It’s been utter pandemonium,” he told me. “You should see it in here on Saturdays. It’s like we’re throwing a big party or having the year’s biggest sale. Every. Saturday.”

He shook his head. “And it’s getting even busier, even though the COVID numbers keep rising. And a lot of the people we see? Are real old folks.” Here he pointed over my shoulder at the woman who’d come in behind me. “She’s no spring chicken,” he said. “Well, I’m not either. But you have to wonder, what are they doing?”

He went on: “This pandemic has been so hard on everyone. Well,” he reconsidered. “Not on us. This is our best year ever.” The way he said it – coupled with the purple hollows under his eyes – didn’t really sell me on the “best” part of his sentence. I really hope he and his fellow salespeople get significant bonuses for dealing with all these people clambering over one another to get their grubby paws on the last available electric range, that’s for sure.

He was able to schedule the installation of my new microwave/removal of my old microwave (which means I will have another human in my house later this week, yikes) and took my payment. I didn’t get to take the microwave with me – the installation company will pick it up from the warehouse and bring it to me on Thursday. Frankly, it made me a little uncomfortable to leave without it in my room temperature hands. I kept waiting for someone – No Spring Chicken, perhaps – to swoop in and buy it out from under me. I guess we’ll see, come Thursday, whether I actually bought a microwave or some stainless steel air.

All in all, I was in and out of there in twenty minutes flat. Then I came home and reheated leftovers on the stove for lunch because that is a perfectly reasonable, if more time consuming, way to reheat things. 

by

Window MADNESS

Windows! Windows! Windows!

I have a sharp pain pulsing just above my right eye and that’s what it’s saying.

Last summer, driving with my parents on a two-lane highway through one of the great forests of the north, we passed a giant sign propped up against the pines at the end of a narrow gravel driveway. You couldn’t see the house, but you could clearly read the sign, which was made of several plywood panels nailed together, and stood probably six-feet by eight-feet, if not even bigger. Someone had scrawled “DON’T BUY BLEEFBLORP WINDOWS” in angry spray paint letters across the wood. On both sides, I noticed when we made the return trip. (I can’t remember the actual window company named.) It made me laugh, at the time. But I am beginning to understand what drives a person to make such a sign.

It feels possible that I have mentioned this before, but I am too lazy/window-fixated to check. We had an energy audit performed on our house a few months ago (which was really, REALLY cool. If you are interested in making your home more energy efficient and have $50 or so to spend, you may want to see if your local utility company provides an energy audit.) which was fascinating and informative. The auditor sealed up our doors, set up a blower, and produced a light vacuum inside the house so we could walk around and find places where air was coming in. Guess what had the most leaks? ALL THE WINDOWS.

It’s not terribly surprising to me, that they are SO LEAKY. They are nearly 30 years old, after all. And it’s clear to me that some of them need replacing anyway, beyond the leaky-around-the-edges stuff; the seal between the panes of several of the windows has begun to fail, which produces unpleasant condensation that you cannot remove. So. We need new windows. Our utility company will give us some money back on each window we replace ($25 a window, I think?), up to $1,500 (we don’t have that many windows), as long as we replace them within a year from doing the audit. So, great, let’s do it.

I have been doing plenty of Window Research, and I feel fairly well-versed in the difference between vinyl and wood and aluminum. I understand U-factor and R-value and I know about double-pane vs. triple pane, and argon vs. krypton in between the panes. My husband read up on sneaky sales tactics to avoid, and so I feel good about spotting and avoiding those, too.

But nonetheless, it is A PROCESS and I am tired and annoyed and I am strongly in favor of just MOVING TO A NEW HOUSE where someone ELSE has made all these ridiculous window choices and let the next owners deal with this window madness themselves.

What’s driving me so crazy, you ask?

1. Sales tactics. Even the companies that SWEAR up and down that they don’t go for sales gimmicks are still trying to sell you on their company and their windows. As they should. So they are still using sales tactics. And sure, some of them are less in-your-face than others. But you still have to meet with someone and go over all these options and hear them pitch their windows and talk about how much better they are than their nameless competitors.

And I kind of think that the less in-your-face tacts are just… more sleazy and manipulative. This one guy from a company that prides itself on being a No-Sales-Pressure, No-Gimmicky-Tactics company was so laid back I thought he was going to fall off the barstool at my counter. Yet, despite his air of “hire us or don’t, we don’t care,” he was also clearly deploying very typical sales tactics. Like, he made this big deal about how, with him, “the price is the price,” and that other companies who offer One Day Only! sales or Act Now! discounts are really only able to offer those prices because they are jacking up the non-sales price from the getgo… But then he also slid in there, “If you’re looking for the lowest price windows, I might as well leave right now. That’s not what you’ll get with us.” We are all conditioned to think that priceyness is representative of quality, right? And, especially combined with his assurance that discounts and sales are representative of sleaziness, he’s clearly Being a Salesman and manipulating me! It just rubbed me the wrong way.

And YES, I know they need to make to money. I know they use sales tactics because they are effective. I know that we make a million choices a day based on overt or invisible manipulation by savvy marketers. I KNOW. I used to write sales copy! But that doesn’t mean that I like it. And I like it even LESS when I’m being assured that I am NOT being Sold To.

2. Choosing an installation company. I am only calling the companies in our area that are rated highly by Angie’s List, with tons of positive reviews… but still. You don’t really KNOW if they are a good company. And I am so irritated with the sales tactics that I find myself suspicious of EVERYONE.

One guy was here in my house for TWO HOURS, pitching his windows. He seemed very nice. But he was so completely focused on building up his credibility that he talked and talked and talked himself right out of my good graces. When he really does seem like a good guy! A person who built his company from scratch and really works hard and knows his stuff and cares about his product. But all I can think about is how the installation will take ten times as long as it should because he won’t be able to stop talking!

But also when I remembered that I hadn’t asked about U-factor, and said something like, “Oh! I almost forgot that I should ask you about the windows’ U value!” he gave me a simpering smile and said, “Did your husband tell you to ask that?” and I said, “No, I researched it.” And then he couldn’t even TELL ME. Well. A) MADDENING and B) Not good, Pete.

3. The windows themselves! Not only do you have to make sure you’re choosing a good company, but you have to make sure the WINDOWS are good. The company who sells the windows is going to make them sound like the world’s best windows, and they’ll have all sorts of awards and stamps and seals of approval to make you think they are super great. But then, you look up the manufacture online, and they are NOT GREAT. Maybe I need to work backwards, and start with the windows… and then find out who installs them?

4. The minutiae. Listen, I just want as close to the same thing we have as possible. Just… new and better quality. While others may care deeply, I do not CARE if my window latches are brushed silver or brass. I do not need internal shades in my sliders. (Especially not for an additional $800.) (Or an additional $450, depending on which company I ask.) I do not care if the latticework is flat or contoured. And when I choose, “white,” please do not then tell me, at length, about the different color options, for an additional $250 a window. If I say I want the standard handle on my slider, please do not tell me how easy the other $60-additional-cost handle is to operate. When I say, very clearly, I just want double paned glass because from what I read it’s FINE for our moderate climate, I do not want to hear how much better the U-factor is with triple-paned glass, and how much of a scam krypton is. I have already made my choice. And there are so very many choices. Latticework or no. Double-hung or picture window. Tempered glass or no (not required except in special cases). Half screen or full. And on and on and on before you are seriously considering boarding everything up and living in darkness for the rest of your life.

5. The price. I had steeled myself in advance that our 13 windows and two sliding doors would cost somewhere around $10,000 to replace. But being prepared to see that on a quote is quite a different thing to being prepared to PAY that amount. And! Some of the quotes are for MORE THAN $10,000!

6. The endlessness of it all! At what point and I going to feel like I have enough information to make this decision and actually BUY the windows? How will I ever decide between these window companies and the windows they sell and the pricing? HOW? I feel like I am ALREADY SO TIRED from researching potential vendors and calling these places and scheduling the meetings and listening to sales pitches… How will I know when I’ve done my due diligence? Hopefully before I DEFENESTRATE MYSELF.

I am ready to give up, is what I’m telling you. But I have two more companies coming to give me sales pitches, and we obviously still have all our very leaky windows from the 90s, so I must endure. And take some window-related Advil.