The Dishwasher Mystery

“I don’t understand why this thing didn’t work,” my wife commented as she took out another plate and examined it.

It was true. The plate did not look as dirt-free as it should have but it was not the crockery she was referring to. She was concerned about the dishwasher she’d just pulled it from and why (after a two-hour clean) it had failed to produce a spotless plate. It was not the only problem item either. Mugs, bowls, spoons, everything in the dishwasher was in a similar state of un-cleanliness. It was worrying because the dishwasher was only a year and a half old. It was still in its prime and many years from retirement. The only explanation was that it was lazy or something was wrong.

“Did you do something wrong with the settings?” I asked, examining the display of buttons and lights and only knowing what half of them meant.

“I don’t think so,” she replied while glancing over from a dirty fork, “And it worked fine yesterday.”

The lights requesting a salt and rinse aid refill were on but we always ignored them since we always buy dishwasher tablets that included them. It seemed like what we were supposed to do after all, just press the ‘All in One’ button that told the dishwasher not to worry about it and get on with it. But was that right this time?

I took the box of new dishwasher tablets out of the cupboard and started to examine it.

“What are you looking for?” my wife asked.

“I’m double checking if these tablets do include salt and stuff. They are in German after all. Maybe we missed something.”

We’d recently bought the dishwasher tablets in Germany (along with a few other products like shampoo and shower gel). They were cheaper there after all and we’d been in the country visiting my wife’s brother and his family. Why not buy some things in bulk and save some money?

“My German is worse than my Dutch,” I said after a minute of examining the box, “but I don’t see anything that looks like it says All in One.”

As I held the box up and read the back my wife looked over from a cloudy glass.

“Oh no.” There was a strange sound of embarrassment in her voice. “That’s not the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

Reluctantly she pointed to the front of the box. I turned it around to look. It took me longer than it should have to spot what she was talking about.

“Don’t you dare write a blog post about this.”