Dry Humor

Our dishwasher has never really worked ideally. I mean, the dishes are fully clean but only “mostly” dry. (I guess that’s better than mostly clean, fully dry.) By “mostly dry” I mean they are wet enough to require either manual drying or spousal ire. Both are undesirable.

We called Whirlpool last year about this and they said that sometimes this happens if you are washing plastic. I guess the plastic doesn’t heat up enough to fully evaporate the water. OK, that’s physics but here’s the thing: 90% of each load is plastic and it’s not like plastic cups are a new-fangled invention. They’ve had, what?, 50 years to work out the kinks. How about a blower? You know, people trying to figure out a way to dry your hair didn’t use that cop out. (We just can’t figure out a way to get people’s heads hot enough to evaporate water.)

Makes me wonder if the engineers assigned to drying aren’t really trying because their part isn’t in the name of the appliance. There’s no glory in making a better drying function. The best and the brightest are assigned strictly to washing. The guys from drying sit at a different table for lunch.

And what do they possibly work on 8 hours a day? I mean, there is only so much to drying. Besides wind pressure, the only factors are temperature and time.

“Hey Burt. What if we were to increase the length of the drying cycle?”

“That’s brilliant! Set up a meeting.”

At the annual conference, I can imagine their breakout sessions:

• Evaporation Exposed
• Heaters Never Prosper: A Career Overview
• Watching Paint Dry IS exciting
• Plastic: It’s Just a Fad