When Farmer H discovered that my oven wasn't heating normally due to a broken lower baking element, I ordered a new one. The UPS driver tossed it onto the gravel where Farmer H parks SilverRedO.
I'm sure that driver tossed it, because nobody gets out of a delivery van to lay a package on the gravel beside a garage. Most of the drivers will bring it to the porch. Some knock on the door and then leave. Some set it on the end of the porch. Some lean it against the garage wall, between the two doors. And some leave it on the porch of a non-neighbor a half mile away on another road, or at a completely unknown house out on the blacktop county road. Still, my presumptions stands: no delivery driver gets out to lay a package on the gravel beside a garage.
Anyhoo... Farmer H got home that day as I was walking to the garage to leave. He was carrying my element under his arm, in a flat cardboard box. I had no idea he was going to install that part while I was in town, but he did. It was nice to have a fully-working oven again to make supper. But I DID have a gripe with Farmer H.
Come on now. You can't say you are surprised...
When I turned the oven on, it smelled all burn-y. I commented on that to Farmer H.
"I turned it on for about five minutes to cook the new off of that element."
"Well. It still smells like something's burning."
"I guess maybe I should have left it on a little longer."
When I opened the oven to put in our taquitos, I saw the reason for the burn-y-ness.
Remember the state of my oven when I took the picture of the broken element?
It still looked the same, with the exception of a bottom element that was intact now. Farmer H had not brushed out those crumbs!
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect Farmer H to go in and clean my oven. However... if he's going to be shoulder-deep in it, using a screwdriver to remove the bottom element, I don't think it would be a hardship for him to brush out those crumbs onto a paper plate. He could use his hand. The element would have been out of the way. Not saying he needed to get the broom and dustpan. Just scoot those crumbs out while he was in there anyway! But no. He left them, and put the new element in over those crumbs, which responded by charring themselves under the extreme heat of the new working element.
I guess this lack of attention to detail is why Farmer H will step over items dropped on the floor, rather than picking them up. Perhaps it's something to do with his vision...
4 comments:
It has nothing to do with his vision and everything to do with the way his mind works.
1-install new element
2-check it works
3-turn off oven
He probably thinks the crumbs belomg there and are part of the oven floor.
River,
Heh, heh! I see the way YOUR mind works! My crumby oven-bottom is such the norm that Farmer H doesn't even notice it...
Exert the very least amount of effort is the motto HeWho lives by, so I am not surprised at all!
Kathy,
I guess I'm lucky that Farmer H likes to eat, or he might have waited years to fix the oven!
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