Microwave on Crack

[abka]

My family was around Friday and Saturday morning after we came back from the Upper Valley Thursday night. They spent a lot of time cooking yummy food (and cleaning my kitchen) which means we have a clean kitchen and lots of yummy leftovers.

My sister was making caramel popcorn which is quickly becoming one of her signature dishes because it is soo soo good. It uses microwave popcorn. So my mom and sister are in the kitchen and the microwave stops. It just goes dead, nothing on the screen, buttons do nothing, we test the outlet it's fine, it's just dead. Great. (We bought the thing in June). I go upstairs to my neighbor Ester and ask to use her microwave (bringing pumpkin chocolate chip cookies as a bribe) and she says sure, but she doesn't own a microwave. I give her the cookies anyway. Fine. So my dad decides to show us how you cook popcorn on the stove like Jiffy Pop when he was a kid. This proves moderately successful although I leave to look up microwave repair places on the internet.

This morning I plug in the microwave one more time just to see and so that I can show Denis, and it turns on! It works fine. Did the microwave need a break? Does it just not like popcorn? Is my entire family crazy? I'm really glad it works, especially now that we have all these leftovers to reheat. I hope this was an isolated episode.

Comments

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

I think obviously it's a classic case of an appliance breaking down until you try to show it to someone who might have a clue about what to do with it. When you tried to show it to Denis, you were basically calling its bluff. Or something. ;-)

Actually, when Chris and I were buying stuff for our apartment last year, we bought a microwave (a Samsung, perhaps?) which, when we took it out of the box and plugged it in, simply refused to work. No lights, no display, pressing the buttons didn't help. We checked to make sure the outlet was working, and it was, so that wasn't the problem. We took the microwave back to the store thinking we could exchange it for another of the same brand, but then we noticed that a bunch of the boxes of the same brand looked like they had been returns, so we thought better of it and just picked out a completely different model that was about the same price. Very strange. Maybe economically priced microwaves are just less reliable sometimes.

[abka.livejournal.com]

Our microwave is a Samsung. It was one that we had registered for, but didn't receive as a gift so we decided to buy it for ourselves. The first one we bought also did not work at all right out of the box, but at that point I was very commited to that particular style of microwave because it matches the retro toaster that Dan got us, so we got another one of the same model (which is aparantly fussy). Our next microwave will not be a Samsung.

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

How weird! Samsung usually makes fairly good products, but apparently their microwaves leave something to be desired.

[coffman.livejournal.com]

I stumbled across this in the sidebar of the Samsung web site:

Did you know?

Samsung Electronics is the World's leading microwave Oven maker. Today, every Fifth microwave oven in The world is made by Samsung Electronics in One of its factories in the UK,Korea, Malaysia or Mexico.

Egads. Our Samsung microwave definitely sucked. But my Samsung TV and DVD player work quite nicely and were really reasonably priced. On the consumer electronics front, Samsung is rapidly becoming the new Sony - well made, cutting-edge stuff, with some design flair thrown in too. Except that Samsung's stuff is much more reasonably priced than Sony's.

Of course, success in TVs and DVD players doesn't necessarily translate into sucess in microwave ovens. When companies make a large array of products, it's tough to make generalizations about the quality of a particular product based on brand name alone. For instance, I have no idea whether Samsung's large oceangoing vessels, aircraft engines, luxury hotel, professional baseball team, life insurance services, advertising agency, credit cards, paints, or hospitals are any good.

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

I have no idea whether Samsung's large oceangoing vessels, aircraft engines, luxury hotel, professional baseball team, life insurance services, advertising agency, credit cards, paints, or hospitals are any good.

Big corporations are scary. =(

A luxury hotel, professional baseball team, and hospitals are considered products? =P