How Do I Deal With Ghosts in My Dryer?
They are Risking My Sanity
After a rough start (Moving is NOT for Old People), things seemed to have settled down and I have been enjoying the work-free lifestyle of my Independent Living Community:
· Bedroom window blind wouldn’t work –Call maintenance. He came that day to show me how to maneuver it.
· Noticed water stain on bedroom ceiling — Call maintenance. The next week the roofers were retiling my roof.
· My front door key wouldn’t work on the inside door leading to the garage. Call maintenance. That afternoon he returned with a working key.
So far, so good, right? Not so fast. I returned home from my Thanksgiving vacation and needed to do a small load of laundry. That went fine until I put the wet clothes in the dryer, closed the door, and pushed the “on” button.
I could hear the dryer spinning and was about to walk away when I heard — Beep. Beep. Beep.
That began what has now been a Five-Day Saga of stumped maintenance men, intermittent all-day beeping when the dryer is OFF (Thus, my diagnosis of a resident dryer ghost), and a lot of wet clothes.
To be fair, Mr. Maintenance came immediately after I called. However, after opening and closing the dryer door multiple times while it continued to beep, he was stumped.
In today’s world of techno everything, he punched a bunch of keys on his Smartphone, took a picture of the dryer’s serial number, and did what I would have done if I had any patience, and wasn’t living where I was paying not to have to worry about broken appliances. He Googled the instruction manual, which, of course, was one of the manuals not listed on Google.
He then brightened up and told me how lucky I was that the HVAC man was on the premises installing a new air conditioner. He would flag him down to come and look at my beeping dryer.
Once again, I am giving credit for the speed at which these maintenance men came to address my issue. The fact that they couldn’t fix it………..well, they’re losing a lot of points in that department.
The final diagnosis was that the dryer needed a new switch, which he ordered. I must interject that while I am writing this (three days after the HVAC man and maintenance man left my villa), my dryer, which is OFF and has NO clothes in it, is beeping. And annoying the Hell out of me.
Mr. HVAC proudly took apart the switch and jerry-rigged the wires so (he said) the dryer would work until the new switch arrived.
Off they went, secure in the knowledge that they had temporarily solved my problem.
HA! Not a chance. I kept the settings exactly as they told me. I put the wet clothes into the dryer, pressed the button, and the dryer turned on and spun. For 30 seconds. It then shut off and beeped. Beep. Beep. Beep. I repeated the process multiple times, getting a working dryer for 30 to 60 seconds at a time before it shut off and began beeping again.
I gave up, hung my wet items across the chairs on my sunny patio, and figured the next time, I could use a neighbor’s dryer until my new switch arrives.
Except my dryer had other ideas. Either at various times during the day and/or at 10 pm on the dot, the damn dryer starts beeping. As it has been doing while I write this in the middle of the afternoon.
???????? My nightly dinner companions have suggested I call the Ghostbusters instead of Maintenance and I am inclined to agree with them. Do you have another explanation for a dryer that has no clothes in it, is turned OFF, and continues to beep intermittently for 5 days?
Folks, I am old. I am tired. I have no patience. I crave peace and tranquility in the last years of my time here on earth. I cannot be dealing with poltergeists in my dryer and wet clothes on my patio.
And I am finally understanding why old people are often crabby.
Note: In case you are considering suggesting I unplug the dryer, let me assure you that is not possible. It’s a stackable squeezed into a small washer/dryer closet. I would have to pull it out of the closet to reach the plug. That would require Herculean strength, which I lack.
© Joan Gershman 2022
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