Now, looking at my soaked cabinet, I berate myself for my foolishness. True, the guy at the appliance store assured me the company is top-of-the-line, their dishwashers far outrank competitors, and the fiasco shouldn’t repeat itself. Plus, I’d purchased a five-year warranty, just in case. So now I have a warranty, but I also have a soaked cabinet and an unusable dishwasher for an indeterminate amount of time. Who needs that? Why didn’t I just go with a different brand?

Too aggravated to deal with warranty-related bureaucracy, I dry the cabinet to the best of my ability, put in a bucket just in case, and stop using my dishwasher until I can get it repaired. A week passes, and “DISHWASHER” is still on my to-do list, in all caps, giving me an all-caps headache every time I think of finding my invoice, getting my warranty info, and spending hours alternately listening to hold music and being transferred between departments.

Until I take out my toaster oven again, and… wet again. Ditto for the outside of the dishwasher pipe, and the bucket now holds a nice puddle of water.

Well. If I haven’t used the appliance in days and still the pipe is leaking, that means it’s retaining water, which means some mechanism somewhere is malfunctioning. This machine is even more broken than I think, and I’m even more annoyed than before. I’m never, never, ever, EVER, no matter what anybody says, going near a KitchenAid anything again!

I call the company where I purchased the appliance. Since it’s less than a year old, it’s covered by the manufacturer’s warranty, and they assure me they’ll get the repair scheduled. No hold times — phew!

The very next morning, at eight o’clock, I get a call from a KitchenAid technician. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he says.

Well, that’s impressive. With or without a warranty, I’ve never gotten a service call scheduled this fast. KitchenAid definitely gets points for customer service. (But still! I’ll never….)

Thirty minutes later I open the door to a very tall, very bald, very cheerful technician. I show him into my kitchen. “This pipe,” I point out. “It’s leaking.”

The guy peers into my dishwasher, pulls out an iPad, and proceeds to have a chat with my machine. I leave the kitchen, leaving him (quite literally) to his own devices.

After just a couple of minutes, he summons me. “Ma’am?”

I return, prepared to hear that yes, the drain pipe needs to be replaced, and unfortunately, just as luck would have it, this part is backordered by three months.

But what the technician actually says is, “Ma’am, this pipe isn’t leaking. What’s leaking is your faucet.”

WHAT?!

“Huh?” I respond articulately, my mind struggling to compute. This isn’t possible. I know it’s the dishwasher.

Although, come to think of it… how do I know?

“Watch,” he says. “I’m going to fill up the machine.” He taps his iPad a few times, issuing commands in dishwasher language. The appliance obediently begins gurgling.

“Now I’m gonna drain it.” Tap tap, swipe swipe, gurgle gurgle. We both watch the pipe closely.

Not a drop of water appears on the pipe’s exterior as the dishwasher drains, smoothly and completely.

I stare. The technician raises his hand. “Look, my hand is dry.” He sticks it up to the underside of the faucet handle. Abracadabra… it comes back wet.

Dumbly, I follow his lead. Yes, the underside of my faucet is indeed wet. I turn on the sink, eyes fixed on the inside of the cabinet.

Drip, drip, drip, drip.

My faucet is leaking.

You know the feeling when you put in an urgent call to IT only to discover your computer is unplugged?

This is worse.

The technician advises me to call a plumber, and then he is off, wishing me a nice day far more pleasantly than I would have in his place.

I’m left staring at the steady drip, drip with equal parts mortification and bewilderment. How did I miss this? Why didn’t it occur to me to check the sink? I was sure it was the dishwasher — but on what basis? The pipe was wet? The entire cabinet was wet!

And when the leak persisted despite my not using the dishwasher, instead of making me reevaluate my conclusion, it only reinforced my theory that the appliance was defective. Now I can’t even explain the logic to myself.

Because, I realize as I text the plumber, I was expecting something to go wrong with the dishwasher. It’s easy to get so stuck on a narrative, you construe reality to fit. And then you can’t even see what’s in front of your eyes.

Not even something as obvious as a steady drip… drip… under the faucet.

I send the plumber a video, and he assures me he’ll be over shortly. I close the cabinet, relieved to have this saga resolved, with a life lesson to boot, all before 9 a.m.

Points for KitchenAid?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 944)