An Unusual and True Story

Sally swore. Loudly. The cat, which had been sleeping in the corner, hastily scampered out of the the kitchen. Last time this ended badly.  Sally wanted to bake a cake to take into work to share with for her friend's birthday. But apparently, the office had done some crazy deal with the 'Oft Wares' company which required that you could only bring in food to share that was made with Oft Wares equipment. Sally sighed, and resigned herself to getting an Oft Wares branded mixer. She headed over to the store, plonked down her credit card and asked for their cake mixer. They had quite an unusual design. The usual beaters, in a bowl designed to slowly rotate. But over the top of it all was a lid that closed, and prevented you seeing inside the bowl while mixing. "It's to prevent accidental splashes" said the sales guy. "Seems odd, I'll have no idea what's happening inside the bowl." bemoaned Sally. "Ok, I'll take it." Image credit: wikipedia The smartly-dressed sales person smiled and asked what voltage she had. "Same as everyone else?" replied Sally. "Yes, but what *exact* voltage do you have? Our mixers require 110.2 volts to run". Sally knew how this went. She'd done it once before. Didn't make it any easier though. She called her husband, who was strangely interested in the electricity grid, and he confirmed, yes they had 110.2 volts. Sally paid and took the box home. So good so far… Once in the kitchen, Sally opened the shiny looking box. A note sat on the top. It said she needed to get an installer to install her new mixer. "Arg!" She never liked those guys, they always seem to be going into rooms and she suspected they looked through her personal stuff. But apparently it was the only way. So the installer arrived and starting doing whatever those guys do. Sally sat on the lounge and tried to get some reading done. But that guy! Every minute he came over and asked her some incredibly complex question which she really didn't understand. She just went with what he suggested, and she wished that he would just make the decisions and get the job done without continually bothering her! The installer proudly announced that he was done, and she heard his van drive off. Sally went to the kitchen but couldn't find the mixer. Then she looked in the living room, the hallway and finally found it in the garage. "What?!" AND he left the boxes behind. What a mess! Sally moved the cake mixer into the kitchen and switched it on. No sound. It didn't work! And the installer had already left. Sally called up Oft Wares again. They asked her if she had any unusual things installed recently. She said her husband had installed some garden lighting last week.  "Ah, that'll be it. You need to switch that off. Theres a problem with our mixer and garden lighting".  Sally switched off the garden lighting, and tried the mixer. It came to life, and then requested she type in a 14 letter code printed on the back of the box. Aftter that, the lid on the mixer magically opened. Great! Now she can start work on her cake. There was a knock at the door. "I wonder who that is?". Sally peered through the blinds. It was the installer again. "I wonder why he's back?" She opened the door. The installer perkily asked her if she'd like to upgrade her mixer. She happily waved "No thanks! I just got it!". A bit perplexed she headed back to the kitchen and got to work. Collecting all the ingredients and measuring. It was quite a complex recipe she was trying, and spent some time combining all the ingredients and mixing. Finally the cake mixture was looking good. It just needed one more final mix. She put the lid on, and then set the speed to '7' and pressed start. BANG!  Something had obviously gone wrong. Sally called Oft Wares again. "Ahh yeah, that's a known problem with the mixer. If you put the lid on, and then set to level 7, it'll break.". The voice on the phone continued politely, if not a little insanely, "You need to set the level first, then close the lid. Or use a mixing speed level other than 7." Sally listened carefull to this obscure situation. "Either way, need to call the installer again and upgrade your mixer to get it working again". While on the phone, Sally reached over to the mixer, and opened the lid. Her cake mixture had dissapeared! All those hours of work! Gone! "Ah yeah luv, you need to press the 'keep mixture' button every once in a while to make sure that doesn't happen". Sally raised her eyebrow and gently hung up. Sally called the installer back, and after arriving he took a look. "How long will it take?" He said "I estimate about 10 minutes". Sally got back to  work measuring ingredients again. When the installer was done, he left. Sally got to mixing and everything went well. Her mixture turned out nicely, although continously pressing the "keep mixture" button was annoying. She treated the delicate machine very timidly, not wanting it to break again. Some of the controls were very fiddly, and she wondered if the people at Oft Wares did much baking themselves.  The cake did turn out well though, and mostly everyone at work enjoyed it, except for those who she wasn't allowed  share it with because they didn't own any Oft Wares products. The next week her husband agreed to let the installer from the electric grid upgrade their power to 110.3 volts and, as a result,  Sally's cake mixer stopped working. She tried to take it back, but they didn't accept it. Apparently just by opening the box, she had agreed that she couldn't return it even if it didn't do what they claimed it would.  Sally got out of baking and found a new more sensible hobby in astrophysics.   Surely this story is not true?

Click to read more ...