Using Crazy Glue to Stick it to the Man

When Ashley and I were college roommates, we had sort of a running gag about people who preferred to support the local mom 'n pop business over "The Man." At the time, the first Starbucks store was opening up in the small college town near our school, and many students refused to frequent The Man's coffee shop because it might take business away from the local coffee joints.

The thing is, I preferred The Man's coffee drinks. So sometimes I support The Man.

Sometimes, though, I want to stick it to The Man. I'm not going to name names, but The Man's establishment where we bought our refrigerator and dishwasher was a particularly unpleasant conglomerate to do business with. The refrigerator came fine, but with the dishwasher we had all kinds of trouble. The order got lost in the system. The delivery man came with the means to install the dishwasher, but with no dishwasher. Then the store had no way of figuring out how to enter data into the computer to indicate that we wanted both a dishwasher and an installation of a dishwasher. Then they charged us twice, but were unable to issue a refund in the store because refunds for products that require installation have to come from the home services division, not the retail division.

Eventually we did get the dishwasher. That was a little over a year ago. (A year being the warranty period.) The dishwasher has already required one repair, although I attribute that to my general tendency to abuse appliances, and not to shoddy craftmanship.

I also blame my abuse for a recent problem with the refrigerator. Some sort of gross sticky goo seeped down from one of the shelves and settled under the very bottom drawer in the refrigerator. The drawer got stuck in the goo, and I of course pulled with all my might to get it out.

The drawer got cracked in the process. I pulled it out. I cleaned the goo, using my time-tested technique of hot water, Goo Gone, and a metal spatula that I think is intended for serving lasagna.

But I still had a cracked drawer. I took the following blurry cell phone picture to document the damage:

Leaving a gap in the fridge that looked like this:

It's the goo-free meat cubby!

I called the 800 number of the man's establishment where we bought the refrigerator, in an attempt to order a new drawer.  I felt all smug because I was actually taking care of a household repair within 24 hours of the item's breakage.  The man on the phone determined the part number and found the part in the computer.  The replacement drawer was going to cost $111.


One hundred eleven dollars.

Now, the thing is, the entire refrigerator cost $1,000.  Are you trying to tell me that this empty plastic drawer accounts for 10% of the materials in the refrigerator?  I counted, and the fridge has 3 drawers, 10 shelves, and 7 little bins, not to mention the complicated inner workings that make the refrigerator cold enough to refrigerate things.  That materials that make up that one drawer clearly account for a very small fraction of the overall value of the refrigerator. 

That drawer is not worth $100 unless it comes with at least a week's worth of groceries in it.

So, I decided to fix my own drawer and stick it to The Man.

Get it?  Glue?  Stick it? 

Whoa, tough crowd.

So, Bill bought a $3 container of Crazy Glue.  Ten minutes, several sticky fingers, a ruined manicure, and a minor family squabble later, and the drawer looks like this:

Okay, it looks like crap.  But it does stick together.  And I saved $108. 

Except this project did temporarily cost me my sanity.

And now The Man is laughing at me.