"What do I owe you?"

After we moved in, we realized that our dishwasher was not working. We loaded it up, put soap in, and all we'd hear was this humming for the duration of the cycle, and at the end, the bottom of the basin would be completely filled with water, the dishwashing detergent would still be in the cups, and the dishes would still be dirty.

So we called our landlord's go-to guy, his father, M, who lives nearby. Both our landlord and M have Croatian last names, so I would assume that based on his very heavy slavic accent, M probably grew up across the pond and then some. It just makes him a little more difficult to understand sometimes.

M wasn't really wild about coming over. He asked several times if there it was flooding. I explained that it was not flooding the kitchen, but that we still had a problem. Then he insinuated that maybe the problem would go away if we just ran it a few times. I explained that the problem was definitely not improving, and I was also not real wild about his suggestion that I call up the dishwasher tech support and talk to them. We reached a kind of compromise when I said that I would do some more research and he would come over in about an hour.

Saori pulled out the slender operating and troubleshooting guide that came with the apartment, and we went through the list of problems, which didn't include the specific multiple symptoms of an unknown malfunction. When M came over, he looked at the dishwasher, felt the pipes for leaks or stiffness, and pulled the dishwasher out halfway before conceeding defeat and pushing it back into place. He suggested that perhaps by running a few more cycles, we could somehow jog it or otherwise warm it back into use.

In the meanwhile, Saori reminded me of the same problem we had when we came back from vacation in Phoenix, a long time ago that I don't even remember. The dishwasher had not been used for over a month, and we had the same problem. Our maint. guy came over, took off the bottom panel, reached in and jiggled something with the motor and then it worked fine.

I Googled "dishwasher wont run after a long time of not being used" and on the first page of the results was a forum thread detailing our problem and solution, which involved moving the motor blades. So M and I took off the bottom panel, M shut down power to the kitchen, and I reached in and found the motor. True to internet descriptions, the motor was open ended, such that you could see the "blades" of the electromotor inside the loops of wire. With my pliers, I grabbed one and rotated the motor. It was really stiff at first, but then I could feel it suddenly loosen up to spin more freely. We put the panel back in place, switched the power back on, and voila, we had our dishwasher back.

M was beside himself, he asked "how much do I owe you?" and I told him that this first one was free. We probably saved him at least $50 from having to have someone come out and take a look at it. Anyway, it was kind of funny, and its always a good thing to have your landlord like you. Plus I learned a new home skill.