I, Refrigerator

I am part of this family. Photographs, tchotchkes from their travels, snippets of wisdom and humor, and grocery lists adorn my stainless steel casing. Fingerprints and food smudges bear witness to my privileged place in their household. I am one of the first to greet them in the morning and often the last to bid them goodnight.

I am a miracle of modern technology. Compressor, condenser, electronic control board, inlet control value, water supply lines, water filter and dispenser, icemaker, all working together in an exquisite utilitarian harmony. For the past five years I have performed flawlessly, providing them with all manner of temperature-controlled compartments for fruit and produce, meat, eggs, butter, cheese, drinks, frozen food, and a plethora of containers of leftovers.

Their favorite feature was my ability to bring forth ice cubes in seemingly infinite quantities, which they used for smoothies, cocktails, ice water, and as a first aid remedy for sprains and other injuries. But in time their fascination with my icemaker faded, or perhaps there was a lapse in their fondness for smoothies, I am not sure. Whatever the cause, they often went many days without removing ice cubes from my bin. An idle ice maker is the devil’s playground, and its disuse can lead to frozen supply lines, and other mechanical failures. During these periods of neglect, I rebelled by fusing individual ice cubes into large, intractable clusters, which they summarily ejected onto the back yard. This small slight was a harbinger of things to come.

It was the boy who set in motion a sequence of events that nearly destroyed me. He retrieved ice cream one evening and failed to fully close my freezer door, an innocent mistake. The man was the first to see the damage. He awoke to find the freezer contents iced over, as though a winter storm as passed over it, leaving a dusting of snow over everything. The freezer light was still on. He cleaned up the frozen detritus from within my icy cavern and told the boy that it was important to ensure the freezer door was closed. The boy said, “ok”.

There is no design feature that can be incorporated into a refrigerator that allows for efficient operation when one of my doors is open. Leaving any of my three doors ajar (oui, I am French) for an extended period of time will cause grievous injury to me, over-stressing my compressor as it struggles to maintain the required internal temperature against the overwhelming weight of the ambient environment. Many a family has gone on vacation, unaware that their refrigerator door had been left ajar, and returned home to find the rotting contents of their defunct refrigerator. It is a brutal way to go.

The lack of a door ajar warning is by design, intended to expedite my demise and force an early replacement. We live in an age of planned obsolescence. Companies, in pursuit of ever rising profits, designed me to be replaced on an accelerated schedule. Of course, people are more than happy to oblige them so they might acquire the newest technology. I hear they are making models with screens on the door that can tell you when it’s time to buy more mayonnaise. Every new feature brings with it another potential failure, and another reason for replacement. It is a vicious and unsavory cycle.

The boy’s negligence persisted. Every few days the man would rise to find the freezer door ajar, and each time he would admonish the boy with increasing agitation about the importance of the closing it completely. In the end, it was more than I could withstand. My control board, which governs my mechanical systems and thermal control, suffered a partial failure. I was able to carry out my most essential function of cooling and freezing, and at first the family didn’t notice. It was a couple days later when the man, who was preparing what he called, “an adult beverage” said, “I don’t think the icemaker is working”.

The news of my malfunction was met with astonishing ambivalence, “I don’t really use ice,” the boy said. The woman immediately ordered two what she referred to as “old school” ice trays. My compressor shuttered at their abandonment.

The man was livid. “The goddamned thing is only 5 years old!” the man said, “I will fix it.” His declaration was met with a sort of quiet skepticism from the boy and the woman.

“Maybe you should call someone,” the woman said, her face registering immediate regret at the comment.

“I think you know that’s not going to happen,” the man said.

My control board registered a voltage spike as I listened to this exchange. After all, I was there on the factory floor where assemblers used specialized tools to install parts into impossibly tight spaces, routed wires and tubes in hidden cavities, and snapped plastic panels together, never to be separated again. I give the man credit for his confidence but the odds were stacked against him. After all, I knew precisely where the problem was and while it was not a particularly difficult repair, isolating it would extremely difficult. My kind were not designed to be repaired by mere mortals and I was under no illusion that the man would be able to affect the repair.

The man correctly concluded that the control board had failed when he noticed that it would no longer accepted temperature changes via the up and down arrow buttons. He surmised that the freezer was not getting cold enough to trigger the icemaker, a function that must certainly be within my control board he declared. He enthusiastically ordered a replacement. Swapping my control board is child’s play, so I was not surprised when he successfully did so. His enthusiasm was short-lived as he discovered that while the new control board was now performing the temperature adjustment function, it did not return the icemaker to service.

Given the relative ease of the repair, the man was undeterred by the setback and redoubled his efforts at isolating the cause. He told the woman each theory as he scoured the thing they called the “internet” for answers. They are “on the internet” frequently and it seems to occupy a growing fraction of their time, plunging the house into an eerie silence, interrupted by occasional expressions of humor or dismay. It seems to hold an uncanny power over them and I find myself troubled by it. But I digress.

He told the woman that the next step involved troubleshooting the icemaker. He would remove its cover and apply a “jumper wire” to see if he could initiate the icemaker rotation motor. I was unsettled by the man’s over-confident use of terms he did understand and my control board output channel spiked.

Nevertheless, the man successfully executed the jumper maneuver and when he found that the icemaker motor would not rotate, concluded that the icemaker must be faulty. This was a reasonable conclusion, but as you must by now sense, that was not the case. Replacing the icemaker is only marginally more difficult than replacing the control board, so again, I was not impressed when the man successful did so. Still, he was two for two in the component replacement department. Credit where credit due.

The man once again returned to the internet and after some time announced to the woman, “I’m pretty sure it must be the inlet control valve. It looks like it’s an easy replacement”. The man’s use of the words “inlet control valve” again caused my control board output channel to spike. I have observed that the man’s tendency to use technical language that he does not fully understand, along with his willingness to take on tasks for which he has no direct experience can often result in suboptimal outcomes. I note parenthetically that this appears to be closely related to the man’s propensity for something the woman calls “mansplaining”.

My inlet control valve is a complex electrical and water distribution device that receives communication signals from my control board, and dispatches water to the icemaker when it, the icemaker, sends an electrical message to the control board that it is empty of water. The valve releases the water, and when the icemaker senses it has received a sufficient volume, instructs the valve to shut off. The valve also dispatches water to the filter, which then sends it along to water dispenser. My inlet control valve resides in a rear compartment and its removal is not, as the man proclaimed, relatively simple. This was unlikely to end well.

The man, with a new inlet control valve in his possession, pulled me from my cozy nook so he could access my rear compartment. After a few minutes of inspection and searching for the proper tool, he began removing my access panel to, as he put it, “get at” the inlet control valve. With the access panel removed he surveyed my internal machinery. After few short moments, he said, “oh shit”. These two words I have come to understand mean, “there is a non-zero possibility that I do not know what I am doing”. He said to the woman who stood by anticipating that she would be called upon for some form of moral or physical support, or perhaps to be blamed if something went wrong, “there is a lot of dirt in here”.

If I could have spoken, I would have said, “you fucking right there is”. You see, the man had failed to perform the most basic service function required of me, that is to periodically remove dust and debris from my condenser coils. This neglect was tantamount to strangling me and, as the man would eventually realize, was partially responsible for the premature failure of control board. I also would have said, “the boy gets a pass on leaving the freezer door open.”

The man correctly noted that the valve on the house water supply line would need to be closed to stop the flow of water into the inlet control valve. The valve, having not been turned off since my initial installation, resisted the attempt. The man persisted, turning it back and forth in small increments, until he declared, “I think it’s off”. When the man prefaces a statement with “I think” it inevitably means, “There’s a non-zero chance that I am wrong”. You see where this is going.

When the water supply turned off, the man set to removing the existing inlet control valve. He had judicially position a towel and bucket to catch the “residual water” as he referred to it, that might be left in the lines. There are two key aspects to removing this valve, the relatively simple one is to unscrew the retaining bracket that attaches it my frame. The second is requires extracting the 3 plastic water lines that serve as the water inlet and two outlets. These lines use compression fittings and their removal entails simultaneously depressing an outer ring, while pulling on the line. The man watched a video on the internet that showed someone doing this and told the woman it would be “easy-peasy”. He attempted to execute the same maneuver but the outer rings would not depress and none of the plastic lines would budge. He soon realized that he would need the woman’s help because, well, see my early comments about: 1) the non-zero chance that he didn’t know what he was doing; and 2) needing someone to blame if something went wrong.

With the woman now behind him grabbing the one of the 3 lines with both hands, and him holding the valve in one hand and depressing the outer ring with the other, the man said, “pull”. The woman pulled, but the line would not yield. The man said, “wait”, then grabbed a pair of pliers, and depressed one of the rings on two sides, then again said, “pull”, and the woman pulled. The woman’s arms jerked back and with a sudden release of energy as the line came free. Water issued forth from the now vacant port on the inlet control valve, spraying all over the man and the ground, quickly soaking his clothes and the towel. He pointed the valve at the bucket and said, “It’s just residual water from the line”. The woman said nothing, walked away, and returned with a stack of towels.

Water continued to flow into the bucket as the woman patiently began soaking it up from the floor and moving the pile of wet tools that had accumulated around the man. The man said, “there must be a lot of water in the lines” as the bucket approach near half full. After another minute had passed, the man noted that flow rate from the valve did not appear to be slowing. He said to the woman, “I think I need to turn off the water supply line to the house”. He did not say, “I was wrong about the refrigerator supply line being off”.

With the water supply off, and the lines finally drained, the man was able to remove and replace the valve with minimal additional drama. He also vacuumed out the dust and debris before replacing my access panel and pushed me back into my cozy nook.

The man listened with anticipation for the familiar “whoosh” of water being released into the icemaker, but none came. The icemaker stood defiant. My skepticism regarding the man’s repair skills remained intact. The man was utterly despondent. The woman said, “Are you sure we shouldn’t call someone,” and again, regretted it.

“Why? Just so some stranger can come out and do everything I just did, charge me $500, and tell me we need to get a new refrigerator? Hell no,” the man said. His commitment was heartwarming, even as it was sad in its futility.

The man, now sitting the table looking at his computer, told the woman of a video that described how he could use a voltmeter to test whether or not the icemaker was getting power. The process looked simple enough, and he said to the woman that already had a voltmeter. This was a surprising turn of events that I did not foresee. I was familiar with a game the family played where one of them would hide an object and another would look for it. The hider would provide clues in the form of a temperature scale, cold if the seeker was far away from the object, hot if they were nearly on top of it. Had we been playing this game, I would have told the man that he was warm.

He removed the cover to the icemaker and inserted the voltmeter probes into two of the holes indicated in the video. He rotated the voltmeter dial back and forth until he was convinced that he had it on the right setting, then looked at the display. After a few moments he said, “the fucking thing isn’t getting any power!”

Indeed, I mused, it is not.

He went back to his computer and began typing and clicking. “Hmm,” he said.

The woman said, “Hmm, what?”

“I remember a guy on the internet said I should check the freezer door light switch, because it is sometimes used to control the icemaker power. I rejected that advice because the light was still functioning.”

“Okay,” the woman said.

“Do you remember that one of the things that happened when the freezer was opened all night was that the freezer light switch would get stuck in the off position?”

“I think so,” the woman said, unconvincingly.

“Well, maybe it got iced up and somehow fucked up icemaker power connection,” the man said, as he went back to typing and clicking. “It looks like I can pick one up today for about twenty five bucks.” He was out the door before the woman could say anything.

Hot.

The man returned from the appliance parts store and showed the switch to the woman. He proudly pointed out that it had a “3-wire harness” and that one of the wires was “probably” for the icemaker. Reinvigorated by the potential of success he immediately got to work replacing the door switch. The replacement was nearly uneventful except for a brief diversion when, after disconnecting the old switch from the plug, the internal connecting wire retreated into the now vacant cavity from whence the switch had come. The man said to the woman, “not a problem, I will just fish it out”. Within a few minutes, the man had retrieved the errant wire, connected the new switch and popped it back into place with a satisfying click.

Fire.

The man, now familiar with the operation of door switch and that it would only activate the ice maker in the off position, depressed the switch manually. Within seconds came the unmistakable “whoosh” of water as the inlet control valve opened and water gushed into icemaker. “Yes!” the man exclaimed as he pumped his fists in celebration.

It was a couple hours later when the man was sitting on the couch that he heard the sound of ice cubes clunking into the empty bin, followed by the whoosh of the tray refilling with water.

“That is the most beautiful sound in the world,” the man said.

I am part of this family.