Dishwashers

Leave it to the eclectic topics of the A-Hed pieces in the Wall Street Journal to land on a story of how people load their dishwashers and the friction that differing ways of loading one infect domestic relationships.

The partner frustration over who left the cap off the toothpaste tube has been eliminated by the manufactures now attaching the cap to the tube. Loading a dishwasher has replaced the verbal tussles.

A-Hed pieces are the gems of the WSJ. Rupert Murdoch once considered eliminating them. Was he nuts? Consider that recently they have touched on hotel rooms and Murphy beds; Matzos; an April Fool prankster at Citibank in the executive suite.

I have to say my wife and I really do not disagree on how to load the dishwasher and I have to say the dishwasher is never a cause of disagreements. Fox News causes more friction than the best way to keep the plates and spoons clean.

We would have never made the cut to be interviewed by the reporter on how we might differ on loading the dishwasher.

Consider that the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom, and his wife Akshata Murty are asked who does the job of loading the dishwasher, and who does it best? A prime minister!

The reporter, Natasha Khan, takes us on a trip of all the highly educated people and their equally highly educated partners who share their dishwasher loading stories and preferences.

Ms. Khan lifts an interview the Sunaks gave fashion magazine Grazia in which basically Rishi tells the world his wife makes an effort, but he makes the effort better. Read: he rearranges things without rancor. They do look happy.

There is a Facebook group (of course there is) Extreme Dishwasher Loading which saw a jump in its membership to top 31,000 members after the couple's remarks.

YouGov Omnibus claims that 65% of Americans believe there is a right and wrong way to load a dishwasher, rather than "just my way and your way" which seems less combative.

Another poll  claims there are 18 arguments a month! amongst Americana households over dishwasher loading. This seems incredible. Where do these numbers come from? Are reports filed? How many lead to domestic violence and 911 calls was not disclosed. 

After the prime minister and wife have weighed in, we meet Nina and Stephen Edwards who describe approaches that diverge in the woods. Stephen is a is a professor of computer science at Columbia and admits to making a "mental map" of how things should go in the dishwasher  Don't we all? Nina, an illustrator and adjunct professor at Pratt institute, admits to "just making things fit." Way to go Nina.

It's obvious from the photo of the couple touching hands atop the appliance battlefield without knives in their hands, that whatever divergent stacking methods they advocate they still love each other. How many couples can say that?

Does anyone really take the task of dishwasher loading seriously? There is nothing that cannot be elevated to seriousness.

There is a Proctor and Gamble "dish-science center" on the outskirts of the corporation's headquarters in Cincinnati that is staffed by scientists! who recreate kitchen dishwasher scenarios of scorched food and dirty plates to answer the question that many have on their minds, "to pre-rinse or not."

One of the scientists, Martin Eberhard, at the facility (you wonder how heavily guarded the place might me) tells Ms. Khan that he never pre-rinses because dishes that are too clean fool the sensors which are trained to detect food remnants and make the dishwasher work less efficiently.

Is he nuts?. What dishwasher does he have? One with sensors? I don't remember that being a feature on our dishwasher. I see nothing that looks like an electric eye.

For ourselves, my wife and I easily co-exist. Sometimes she rearranges how I've stacked it, but it's usually an improvement. We both agree where the dinner plates, smaller plates, bowls and glasses go. She places the silverware in the basket; I place it in the top rack. 

We do differ on how close the plates are to each other. I go with the spaces designed by the manufacturer, therefore getting more plates lined up. She leaves an extra gap if she can. She tells me with no extra gap the dishes don't come out as clean. I've never tested this. I don't believe her, but don't argue either. There's just her way, and my way, not the highway.

As for pre-rinsing, that is done if necessary, but I clean my plate so well there is no need to pre-rinse. And when I clear the table, as I always do ever since I once wore an apron selling hot dogs at Coney Island in the summer after graduating high school for a money hungry Greek, I've always considered myself to be a Greek busboy. I scrape the plates over the garbage can quite well. For some reason I like to do this.

Thus, plates do not enter our dishwasher with food stuck to them. My wife is always proud of the dishwasher repairman who once had to come over and made her day when he said she was very clean about her dishwasher. The drain wasn't clogged with foodstuffs. Apparently, in his experience, he encounters those who he describes as using their dishwasher as a garbage disposal.

One couple, the Freemans, he a fitness trainer and she a fitness influencer, made a clip that was viewed by 21 million people on their dishwashing techniques. They provided a soundtrack to their loading. He, waltz music to show off perfectly spaced plates, and she, AC/DC to accompany her zero technique that she describers as "a racoon on meth."  

People will do anything for attention these days. And people will watch.

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