The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

From the time we bought a new NEC front-loading washing machine last year it caused trouble.   It often refused to spin dry, leaving a soaking pile of clothes in the machine at the end of the cycle;  at the end of a cycle it would emit a mysterious series of “beeps” and the LED would show some alien code such as “LRE” or somesuch.  After kicking, punching, swearing and glaring at the machine failed,  I read the instruction book.  I learned nothing useful.  I called the service person who pronounced the machine healthy

Then, two weeks ago, it really broke down.  It wouldn’t pump water at all.  It would go through a wash cycle then make growling noises, beep and stop.  When I opened the door a wall of water gushed out and flooded the laundry. From then on it just sulked.  I called the same serviceperson.  He came, checked the machine and, with great insight, said it needed a new pump.

Two weeks later, the same person replaced the pump.  After he departed I cleaned up the mess left and looked at the old pump.  It rattled when I shook it. I opened it up.  Inside was a small, blackened disc. Cleaning the disk up a bit revealed a Swedish 10 Kronor coin.  Stamped on one side, around a kingly looking head, is “Carl XVI Gustaf Sveriges Konung For Sverige I Tiden”.  The other side has three crowns and is marked “10 Kronor”.

I am dismayed.  There are three possibilities: First, because it is the same size as the Australian $2 coin (and is worth about A$1.75), the 10 Kronor was taken as change by a household member, left in a pocket of clothes washed in the machine, the coin came out and was swirled somehow into the pump; Second, the pump may have been made in Sweden and the coin was dropped into the washing-machine-pump assembly line by a worker.  Third, a Swede sneaked into my house, disassembled the washing machine and inserted the coin in the pump as an act of sabotage.

So, what is the most likely of these scenarios. The first one, involving the coin being accidentally washed in the machine, is improbable because the washing drum is a one piece affair containing only very small rinse-holes - far too small to admit the coin.  I don’t know about statistics, but if you washed predominantly Aussie coins in a washing machine wouldn’t it be more likely for one of them to screw up the pump, rather than a Swedish one?

The second possibility, that the coin was caught up in the assembly of the pump is credible: Sweden makes a lot of washing machines; NEC could have badge-engineered their machines from an Electrolux donor; and Ingvar Kamprad himself may have dropped the coin in while visiting the assembly line, rather than pay it to the notoriously high-taxing Swedish Government.  On second thoughts, this is unlikely since I understand Mr Kamprad supervises Ikea from a base in Switzerland.

The third possibility, of a Swedish “Rainbow Warrior” type raid on my washing machine, I shall leave aside for the moment as it is simply too appalling to consider.

No, I believe it is down to Oskar or Maria the washing-machine-assembly worker.  The coin in the pump was a silent protest against the high taxing nanny government of Swede or the boss at Electrolux, or both. Or they want to teach us Australians a lesson for buying a Japanese-badged product.

This theory explains why the damn machine didn’t work from the start. Also, it now works better than ever. I mentally apologise to the fine, Japanese workers of NEC.  The Swedes are to blame.  Just ask the  Brandenburgers of 1618 -1648.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.