A few weeks ago I had a classic thing happen to me. Actually, this is the second time it’s happened, and both times it caused me to laugh out loud afterwards. There’s nothing that can cause a deep gut laugh (after the frustration subsides) like a product demonstration gone horribly wrong. Here’s an example and my all time favorite. (and it’s what I think of each time I something crazy happens during a sale)
So I opened up the garage and led the prospective buyers over to the dryer to demonstrate how it works. It was a late 20 something Russian girl with her father who was probably in his early sixties and who spoke no English, or so I thought.
I showed them some of the features and then turned the dryer on and waited for it to heat up. After letting it run for about 20 seconds, the girl said “we’ll take it” and right at that moment, I opened the dryer door only to have a poof of smoke come out right into our faces.
“Ehffire!” said her father.
“Oh, I think it’s just a little bit of lint that got on the heating coil.” I said, my face changing colors slightly. “Let’s give it another try.”
So I turned it back on, waited, opened the door again to more smoke. Sigh.
“Well, my father is concerned about the smoke. I think we’ll pass. Thank you.”
I ended up taking the front panel off and vacuuming up a large amount of dryer lint that had gotten inside the dryer, and a decent amount that had gotten in by the heating coils. It now runs like new.
The other time this happened was when I was using my air compressor to clean out a stack-able dryer. I had accidentally blown some lint back into the dryer. I only had a few minutes to test it out before a lady who wanted to buy it was going to be at my house. I took it into the garage, plugged it in and turned it on. I was holding the vent hose so it would blow out the garage. When the air from the vent house turned from clear, to dark grey, it occurred to me that something might be wrong. When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was an open flame. I unplugged the dryer as fast as I could and wheeled it out onto the driveway. Right as I set it down, the lady drove up!
Tips:
You can’t entirely prevent things like this from happening. Test items more extensively before someone comes over.
A few months ago I was preparing to sell an expensive sewing machine and was excited about the sale. I was setting up the machine that I had already completely gone-through and was like new (so I thought). I plugged in the machine and went to turn it on and the power button broke!
About thirty seconds later she arrived.
needless to say, that sale never happened even after I replaced the switch.