The time we defrosted a freezer

I was 18. I was living in Africa. I wasn’t that good at being a grown up but I was good at convincing myself I was.

One time my friend Lucy and I had noticed that we couldn’t fit stuff in our freezer anymore because it was full of ice. We thought we should defrost it but just made a vague guess about how exactly you did this. We had a fridge freezer thing so left the door open for a while but in the stifling heat of the coast town where we lived, all our milk and butter was having a bad reaction. We sat and puzzled for a bit about how to go about defrosting in a shorter time.

Then Lucy had an idea. Lovely Lucy, one of those people in life who you want to be like, who’s so easy to love. Lovely Lucy. She picked up a hammer and approached the fridge freezer. I stood by, a little uncertain about what she was going to do with it…..

Then Lovely Lucy used the hammer to smash all the ice to bits and get it out off the freezer. Mid-smashing session, me hovering nervously around, there was a noise. A hissing sound. Ssssssssssssssssss….

On. And on. And on. Went the hissing noise. Until, eventually, it stopped.

We didn’t know what it was but I had the distinct impression that my being-an-adult attempt had failed miserably.

There was a funny gas smell and we giggled nervously as I ran off to email my Dad about what we should do. That’s right. I was in Africa, holding my own as a teacher in a classroom, running the local town newspaper, making my living as an editor/journalist, and at the first hint of something electronic that I couldn’t figure out, I was running off to email my Dad.

The return email essentially said, “GET THAT THING OUT OF YOUR HOUSE NOW!”

Obediently, we unplugged it and got it into the garden and consumed everything which had been in the fridge, to save it going off, not because we’re greedy. Honest.

And there it sat for a few days while we pondered what to do. In those few days, the maggots found it. That’s right. The maggots. We opener the door one day to see if it still smelled gassy, and there they were! Whoops! We quickly shut the door, pretended we hadn’t seen anything and called a friend to ask him if we could put the fridge freezer in his car to take it to the repair shop. He said he’d come the next day.

That evening, something happened. Something which only happened three times the entire year we lived there. Something that pretty much never happens in a desert so you wouldn’t even think about it happening (we were basically living on the edge of a desert). Something that when it did happen, was so much worse for only happening a few times a year.

It rained.

The most torrential rain we’d seen since arriving. The wind and rain whipped the fridge door about furiously. It banged and crashed all evening. The rainwater got into every nook and cranny on that fridge. Inside, in the back, into the plug. Everywhere.

The plus side of this rainstorm was that the gassy smell and maggots had disappeared. Yehhhhh!

The down side, however, was that the fridge was SMASHED TO PEICES. Noooooooo…..

Our friend, George, arrived the next day and looked at it in shock. We pretended all was fine and piled it into the car and off we went to the repair shop. He also looked at it in shock and we just smiled a bit and convinced him to try and fix it.

A week or so later, Lovely hammer-wielding Lucy was passing by the repair shop with another teacher from the school and mentioned that they’d had our fridge for a week and we hadn’t heard anything from them.

“O yeh,” said the other teacher, knowingly. “They’ve had my dishwasher for about four years now.”

We spent the rest of the year without a fridge or freezer.

“Have you turned the switch on?”

A few years ago, I was working in a coffee place (the same one where I did my detective work) and my manager had asked me to turn off the freezer to defrost it one evening. I spent most of the evening, with this massive freezer, trying to keep the melting ice from flooding on to the floor, whilst also trying to serve customers and do everything else. It was a bit of a headache but it needed doing so I  didn’t mind. I left the door on the freezer open when I closed up and left, to get some air in. It had been a while since it was last defrosted and it was noticeable. All was well, I pottered off home, feeling like a job had been well done.

Next day was delivery day. I was due in at 2pm, around the time the stuff was being delivered. I was just walking along happily, humming a little tune maybe, ready for my shift.

As I approached, I saw the delivery man…. And I saw a huge freezer on wheels being hauled towards the stock room.

“Guys! What’s going on? Why is this here?”

“When I came in this morning, the freezer wasn’t working. It’s broken. So I called Head Office and got them to send a new one.”

I was actually astounded. I didn’t know what to say. The same person who had asked me to turn the freezer off and defrost it, had opened the shop the next day and thought the freezer was broken because it wasn’t on. How short-term can someone’s memory really be?

“Ok, stop. Take this freezer back to your van,” I told the delivery man. To the staff on shift, I checked, “Did anyone try turning it on?”

They said they had and pointed to a switch on the actual freezer, the one that you use to increase or decrease the temperature.

“No, did anyone turn it on at the wall?”

They pointed to a socket, with two plugs in and said those were both on so they didn’t know what was wrong. I’ll tell you what’s wrong. There are three machines here, two freezers and a fridge. And there are two plug sockets there. So clearly, there must be a third one somewhere else and it’s a safe bet that that’s where your problem lies.

I looked a little to my right and, sure enough, there on the wall, in plain sight, was the third plug. Switched off. I switched it back on. The freezer started up and made engine whirring sounds. The mystery was solved. I didn’t say anything else to the other staff. I didn’t need to.

You make you own conclusions about that story.

Another good one was when we got a new member of staff and when she was being trained, she was told to throw away the bins every night after her shift. The shop was always very clean when she had worked, even the coffee grinder had been cleaned out. Quite impressive, as it was usually only done once a week.

After a few weeks, we noticed that she always left the binbags upstairs and hadn’t taken them out. Someone said to her about taking them out and hadn’t she been told to do it and, as the conversation went on, it suddenly became clear what had been happening.

She thought she had been told to ‘throw away the beans’ every night! So when she finished her shift, she threw away all the perfectly fine and useable COFFEE BEANS and left the BINS in the shop…!

Oops……