This week we're running a small package of essays on the topic of nuisances. Why? That's an annoying question.
When my partner T and I moved two years ago, it felt like the stars had finally aligned to deliver us an eighth wonder of the world: the perfect NYC apartment. The rooms overflowed with light from big, south-facing windows. We had an extra bedroom that I could use as an office. We had four closets that offered abundant storage. We didn't have in-unit laundry—this, on top of everything, would have been an obscene luxury—but we had a dishwasher. A dishwasher! We would live like kings. Why not use an extra plate for bones? Why not rest an in-use spatula in a tiny dish? No matter how many dishes we dirtied, we could just throw the heap into the dishwasher.
Then, under a year into our lease, our dishwasher stopped working. This seemed fine, at first. A broken dishwasher is not something that warrants a call to 311, nor is it covered in the city's checklist of hazardous violations that a landlord must fix in a designated time window. A broken dishwasher represents the loss of a luxury, not something that is necessary for a decent quality of life. But the thing about having a dishwasher in your apartment, even a broken one, is that you feel compelled to use it. It's just sitting there! Having a non-functioning dishwasher, when you signed a lease for an apartment that promised a dishwasher, is a nuisance. But asking your landlord or your super to repair that dishwasher, only to be ignored or gas-lit, as was the case in this particular dishwasher saga, is nothing short of infuriating.
First, I must admit my own culpability. I had not lived in a home with a dishwasher since childhood, and I admittedly did not know about the maintenance it required. I did not realize, for example, that you needed to clean your dishwasher. I guess I assumed that, as a machine responsible for cleaning, it might clean itself in the process. Our dishwasher was not new, and it initially did an acceptable job. We rinsed the dishes before slotting them in the plastic spokes, and they generally emerged looking clean, with the occasional dried herb clinging to a bowl. But over time, the dishes emerged looking worse and worse: greasy, grimy, streaked with sauce.
I only recently learned that you're not supposed to wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. As one Washington Post story states, "Experts almost uniformly agree that dishes do not need to be rinsed—and, in fact, should not be rinsed—before going in the dishwasher, saying it wastes water and might make your machine operate less effectively." Well! I tried this method once, wondering if the real problem was that I had been cleaning my dishes too much before running the machine. This did not fix things.
I assumed the dishwasher was a Me Problem. I began a series of experiments, changing just one thing at a time to see if I could get the washer to work again. I switched from dishwasher pods to powder. I tried a variety of new loading styles, in case any big bowls were blocking the flow. I washed the dishwasher with vinegar and baking soda. I cleaned the filter once a week. T read on the internet that it helped to run the sink water very hot right before starting the dishwasher, so I started doing that. T also read about rinse aid, which apparently helps remove water from the dishes, and we refilled our rinse aid. We tried every combination of wash/dry cycles. Nothing worked.
By this point, the dishwasher had become my greatest enemy. What is WRONG with you, I fumed each morning while re-washing six slimy mugs in a row. But the machine did not reveal her secrets. Each night, I sealed the rubber gasket like a prayer, hoping whatever combination of tweaks I'd made would finally solve the issue. And each morning, the dishes remained dirty, and I'd spend the first 20 minutes of my morning rewashing everything by hand. We were using an obscene amount of water, which made me feel a great deal of shame, and yet we couldn't break free of the dishwasher's allure of a time-saving machine, even as it basically ceased to function.
The least interesting thing about this dishwasher story is the precise way that our dishwasher was broken. In fact, I'm still not sure what happened. What matters is that we asked our super, and eventually our landlord, to fix the dishwasher many, many times over the course of a year. We were stonewalled at every turn. Our super asked us to explain the issue over the phone, which is a horrible medium through which to explain an undiagnosed problem with a machine whose operation one doesn't understand. He then began ignoring our calls. We called our landlord, who asked if we were wiping our dishes before we washed them. Yes, we said. "I don't know what else you expect," he said, adding "a dishwasher isn't supposed to clean everything." OK? Then what is a dishwasher supposed to do?
In June, our landlord raised our rent by nearly 9 percent. We sat down with him in an attempt to negotiate a smaller increase, which he refused. We told him that such a steep hike was unfair, considering—among other issues like inflation and hallway leaks—our dishwasher had been broken for half a year. Our landlord told us, right then and there, that he would certainly get someone to fix the dishwasher. You should tell us when these things don't work, so we can fix them, he told us. Inside, I screamed: WE DID. Our landlord also told us, unprompted, that our dishwasher was better than his dishwasher. OK?? Then do we both need new dishwashers??
A month later, we ran into our landlord around the building and again asked him to send someone to take a look. This time, he did. The super opened our dishwasher and, miraculously identified a part that was broken—I'm pretty sure this was the "upper spray arm," or the spinning part above the rack. He replaced it later that day. T and I rejoiced. Could it have really been this easy? We ran the dishwasher. The next morning: dirty dishes.
I admit I stalled out here. I felt like asking our super to come back to take another look at the dishwasher, when he'd only just fixed it, would be asking too much. I now realize now how silly this is. He hadn't actually fixed anything. The dishwasher was still broken. Sometimes, being a tenant makes me feel like I am asking an endless stream of favors of a stranger, which sets off my constantly buzzing social anxiety. I have to remind myself that this stranger has a contractual obligation to make my apartment livable.
As summer faded into fall, I had lost all hope that this dishwasher would ever be fixed. Indeed, there was no sign that it would ever be. T and I were both so discouraged from our continuous and fruitless pleas. I tried using the dishwasher as a drying rack, but it was clearly not built to be a drying rack (the wet dishes remained not only wet but also mildewed); it was built to be a freaking dishwasher.
Then, Christmas came and delivered us a miracle. Somehow T lost their credit card in California, which was how we paid our rent. They froze the card and shipped a new one to our apartment. In the first week of January, we made one last push for the dishwasher. We emailed our property manager, citing notes from the two previous conversations we'd had with the landlord about the broken dishwasher, and included photos. The manager responded a few days later: "Please feel free to call him and remind him. He probably forgot." Then, the next day, she texted:
Thursday, Jan. 16 was a whirlwind. Someone came by in the morning to inspect our dishwasher and brought a replacement that afternoon. The dishwasher had clearly been through the wars, with bent spokes and faded buttons. And that night, as we ran the water hot and sprinkled powder into the detergent box, we waited with bated breath to see if salvation would arrive in the form of sparkling dishes. They were not sparkling, per se, but they were clean, and this was more than enough.
Over the following days of luxury, T and I puzzled over why the property manager had acted so suddenly to fix our dishwasher. Had our scrooge of a landlord experienced a Christmas Carol–esque situation where he was forced to confront the many ways he had slighted or ignored his tenants? Had some divine power dazzled us with luck? Was this all somehow a trap to raise our rent even higher? And then we remembered the credit card. We had yet to give the manager our new billing information. Did she interpret this unintentional payment issue as a kind of tenant strike for a new dishwasher? Only God and Jennifer know the answer to that. But if there is any lesson to be had from this overly long saga, let it be this. Your enemy is not your dishwasher, but your landlord.
