Christi Phillips

Not that I think about this often, but compared to a stovetop or an oven, a refrigerator isn’t very glamorous. I find it difficult to get excited about what is essentially a big box with cold air in it. So when our refrigerator died a few weeks ago, I didn’t dither over the brand or the style, but replaced it as quickly and as inexpensively as I could.

OK, I’ll admit it: I bought the cheapest refrigerator in the Sears Warehouse. It was only $600. I felt proud to have found such a bargain.

Until eight a.m. the next morning, when it was delivered and wrestled it into place. Soon after it was plugged in, it began to smell. It was a faint, slightly antiseptic smell, kind of like ammonia and spray paint fumes combined.

“Do you smell that?” I asked Brian.

His nose wrinkled a little as he sniffed. “Could be the cleaning solutions they used on it,” he said. “Just wash it out with some baking soda and water.”

But after he left for work, the odor from the refrigerator grew worse. And worse. Soon it was so bad that I couldn’t get within two feet of it without gagging.

I’d never bought a refrigerator before. I had no idea if this was normal. Perhaps all refrigerators went through a smelly phase as they warmed up, or cooled up, whatever it was they did. But what if Freon was leaking from it? Wasn’t Freon toxic? What if I’d just bought a big, cancer-inducing box and installed it in my kitchen? Twenty years from now, would doctors look at x-rays of my grapefruit-sized tumors and say, “She should never have bought the cheapest refrigerator in the Sears Warehouse”?

I picked up the phone. “Hello, Sears Warehouse? I just bought a refrigerator from you and it smells.”

“Wash it out with some baking soda and water.”

“You don’t understand. It’s emitting an odor, a terrible odor, like gas and ammonia. I think it’s leaking Freon.”

“Freon doesn’t have an odor.”

“Well, something has an odor. And you wouldn’t believe this odor. It’s so big it’s filling up the house. I can’t go into the kitchen anymore.”

“That’s one way to stay on a diet!”

“Haven’t you heard of this smelly refrigerator problem before? Surely I’m not the only person in the world who’s bought a smelly refrigerator.”

“It’s probably just the cleaning solutions used to clean it.”

“No, you don’t understand. The refrigerator didn’t start to smell until I plugged it in. It’s emitting an odor. Just tell me, is Freon toxic?”

“Freon doesn’t have an odor.”

“Something has an odor. I’m calling you from my bathroom. I’ve had to shut myself in here because the refrigerator has smelled up the whole house.”

“Is this a new refrigerator?”

“I think so. It was supposed to be in perfect condition. The salesman told me the only thing wrong with it was a little dirt smudge on the side.”

“And you believed him?”

“Can you send someone out here to look at it?”

“Of course I can! How about three weeks from next Friday? I can have a maintenance man at your house on Friday the thirteenth sometime between five a.m. and midnight.”

“Can you send someone out here today?”

“Har har har!” she laughed.

“This is a really big problem,” I said. “I’ve never smelled anything this bad before. It’s like chemical warfare is being waged in my kitchen.”

“It’s probably just the cleaning solutions used to clean it.”

“No, you don’t understand. Pretty soon the EPA is going to declare my house a Superfund site.”

“If it’s really that bad you can always return it.”

“It’s a refrigerator. I can’t just throw it in the trunk of my car.”

I hung up, unplugged the refrigerator, opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans. After a couple of days, the smell began to dissipate. We had to borrow a truck to return the refrigerator—good thing Brian knows how to use a dolly—and bought a new one at Home Depot. It cost a lot more than $600.

*    *    *

Last night the phone rang. I answered.

“This is Sears calling about your maintenance agreement,” a man said.

“What maintenance agreement?”

“For the refrigerator you bought from us.”

“It didn’t work so I took it back.”

“What about your old one?”

“What old one?”

“The refrigerator you had before the one you purchased from us.”

“I didn’t have one from Sears.”

“But it says here that you had one.”

“No, I promise, I didn’t have one.”

“But you have a refrigerator now.”

“Yes, I have a refrigerator now.”

“If you have one now and you bought one from us, don’t you want a Sears maintenance agreement?”

“My refrigerator didn’t come from Sears.”

“It’s your old refrigerator, then?”

“No, it’s new. And it doesn’t smell.”

“It doesn’t smell?”

“Not one bit.”

“You cleaned it with baking soda and water.”

“Clearly you’ve never had an experience with a smelly refrigerator.”

“Let me get this straight: do you want your old refrigerator or your new refrigerator on the Sears maintenance agreement?”

I sighed. “Why don’t you put them both on?”

This entry was posted Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 10:28 am and is filed under My World. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.