Milk Frother Repair
It's funny how little time it takes for everyday life to take you back after returning from 4 months of travel. A little while after I came home, I finally decided to take measures to fix our electric milk frother, which suddenly had stopped working. It's one of these mundane things that I couldn't even imagine just a month prior. Also, it's something that you usually put off and put off again, until some day you decide that you really want milk foam with your coffee. So yeah, procrastination had also made a comeback into my life.
When my attempts of fixing the milk frother myself were fruitless, I had to seek the help of professionals. As it turns out, the Austrian government supports the repair of broken household devices, so I contacted a company close to our home that was sincerely recommended by the particular governmental website. I had the feeling that they could help me, even though their website didn't mention household devices. It showed images of cog wheels and industrial machines, so I got a bit confused. Nevertheless, I gave it a try! I filled in their contact form, asking them if they could fix my milk frother and hit "send". When the form wasn't submitted, a promising message showed up (and I quote): "There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later." I did try again (seconds) later, as instructed by the error message, not expecting a different result. And obviously, the result was the same. Still, I was lucky enough, that I found an "office" email address just next to the form, which I happily clicked on. I copied the text over from the form (since the form at least hadn't cleared), pasted it into my email client and hit send, finally having done the first step of mission "Milk Frother Repair".
Hours later, I got an email, informing me that the email couldn't be delivered. You know how these things always go: you utter obscenities and it's hard enough as it is with these mundane tasks—you just want them to be done with and even though you make a considerable effort, everyday life has its way of draining you of all your energy. As it turned out, the "office" email didn't work because the repair shop "webmaster" from way back when seemed to be unfit to correctly provide an email address on their website (unbeknownst to me in my first attempt of me writing the email, it went to office@www.[name-of-repair-shop].at—obviously, the "www" had no right to be part of their precious "office" email address).
When I corrected their mistake, and that second time actually did send my request, it took the company three days to respond. When they did, they informed me of another ineptitude of theirs (I mean beyond knowing how to provide their email address on their website)—namely, the ability to fix household devices. But kind that they were, they recommended the local electrical shop, which was of course a corporate chain, but all I really wanted was my milk frother fixed, so I accepted their suggestion.
I was lucky that even though a large conglomerate of an electrical shop, it nevertheless was part of the governmental effort to fix broken household devices. I booked an appointment to have my device looked at in the nearest shop—which was scheduled to happen another two days later—handed over my broken milk frother, explained the problem and was then told to wait until they had the estimation of the problem from the company that was actually selected to fix my household device—since apparently, the electrical shop itself didn't really offer this service.
It took five more days for the electrical shop to have said estimation from the household repair shop. Funny enough, since either the heating or the electronics of the milk frother were broken, the actual repair would have cost me three times the price of a new device. On top of that, they had sent my milk frother to another federal district of the country, so already by then, I doubted that the governmental household device repair undertaking would still have had a positive environmental impact. Obviously, I ordered a new device, which took another two days to be delivered.
When I finally had a new, working milk frother back in my home, I was happy. But I started to wonder: if all mundane things in life were this difficult, I wouldn't be able to get anything done. Thankfully, looking back, the milk frother repair was the most difficult undertaking of this year. And being blessed with milk foam in my coffee every morning ever since, I'm quite happy I did what had to be done.