Wednesday Walk: A Fridge for the Ages
Wednesday Walk: A Fridge for the Ages
I want a refrigerator that lasts and a tricky job application
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Every Wednesday, I offer a few short ideas that I hope will inspire you to do some more reading, thinking, and exploring. Let’s take a little walk together and see where the path leads…
It’s Been a Week…
I can’t say much yet, but this week’s Wednesday Walk is going to be brief as my last week or so has been pretty jammed packed and I just haven’t been in the headspace to read or write as much as I usually do.
Rest assured, I am still being productive. There’s a new podcast episode up for paying members right now (if you’d like to upgrade, you can get early access to it now). That episode may be one of my favorite episodes to date! I have another two podcasts to record over the next few days as well.
I will share more when the time is right. Stay tuned!
Out Cold
I recently came across a news story from NBC Bay Area about a lawsuit against LG for manufacturing faulty refrigerators. The story opens with a terrible bit of local news scripting, but it gets good after that. Take a look:
Basically, there are a significant number of complaints against modern refrigerator manufacturers alleging that their products are designed to fail. One woman profiled has been through three refrigerators in five years!
This happened to my mother in law about ten years ago when she renovated her kitchen. She purchased a new fridge that failed maybe two years later. She had a repair tech to the house who said his labor would cost more to diagnose and fix the problem than just buying a new fridge. He blamed thin walled copper refrigerant lines that slowly leaked over time and said it was a typical problem. My mother in law had purchased a basic fridge from a big box store that was maybe $500 or so.
I was discussing the problem at work (during my This Old House days) and another producer ran into a similar problem. He had recently renovated his kitchen and spent several thousand dollars on a high end fridge, only to have it fail soon after and require replacement too. In his case at least, springing for the more expensive model didn’t mean a better build quality or more durable product.
Watching this NBC story, it made me realize just how widespread this issue is. A lot of resources go into the manufacturing and shipping of a refrigerator: metals like copper and steel, plastic, glass, foam insulation. It’s disheartening to think that all of those materials are getting trashed after only a few years, especially knowing that manufacturers can and should do better.
A quick search on eBay reveals fridges from the early days of electricity that are still in operation. 90 years later!
When we bought our current house 15 years ago, it came with a basic Kenmore fridge (actually manufactured by Frigidaire) that we planned to replace at some point. The fridge was manufactured in 2004 and has never given us any trouble, short of some shelves breaking, which were easy to replace with easy to find parts.
We’ve joked that if we ever moved, we may want to take that fridge with us, because at this point, it’s been incredibly reliable. Were that fridge to ever fail on us, I’m not sure what we’d end up doing.
I honestly feel like I’d rather buy a 30 or 40 year old refrigerator off Craigslist at this point rather than gamble that a new one will have any longevity. I would be willing to pay more for a new fridge that I knew was built well, but the durability issues seem to be happening at all price points from several brands.
It’s disappointing to me how brands have devalued their own products so much in the name of short term profitability and I hope the tide will turn on this trend soon.
The First Test
I photographed this sign at a red light earlier this month.
I want to give the benefit of the doubt here that maybe the wind messed up the spacing here, but if McDonald’s is hoping for applicants, I’m not sure that this is the best way to go about it. I was quite baffled by what action I was supposed to take and how that would lead to a job.
It reminded me a bit of when I was first looking for a job as a teenager. This was the late 1990s and Best Buy was all the rage. I tried to apply in the store, but they told me they used a phone-based application system and to call a certain number.
When I did, I was taken through a touch tone menu with a series of questions. The first was: “Have you ever stolen from an employer? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no.”
“Come on,” I thought to myself. “How easy is this. Of course I’ve never stolen from an employer.” And yet somehow, I accidentally pressed 1 on my keypad. After that, the automated system said something like “Thank you for your interest but we don’t believe you would be a good candidate. Goodbye.”
If you’d like to work at this particular McDonald’s, I hope you can pass your first test, which is clearly decoding this sign.
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Other Wednesday Walks
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My mom bought an International Harvester (who knew they made appliances) chest freezer in 1950, kept it for 50 years, and then gave it to a friend who put it in their cottage. As far as I know, it is still running!