My Adventures with an 8qt KitchenAid Mixer and the Appliance Medic

I recall reading this question -- might have been on SN since it sounds like something @kr would ask -- somewhere. Where, I can not remember.

Contemplating this, I scratched my head and stared at the thrown-together workstation on my dining room table: two screwdrivers, a flathead and Phillips, pliers and a tattered rag made from an old flannel shirt, the mixer's racecar red steel casing, separated from its body exposing a motor module, circuit board and some wires, a few screws and a plain white paper coffee cup, black plastic lid. Definitely there'd be none of the "I'll just clean out the gears and put some more grease in them," that I'd so confidently claimed would happen. I stared at the motor and knew I didn't have the funny six-point star tipped screwdriver handy to start getting inside, nor had i intended to.

The mixer had started sounding funny earlier that morning at the bakery it calls home. Better to nip it in the butt early before it gets unusable--that is what the responsible, entrepreneuring business owner would do.

But that wasn't me. I was just the guy with the tools.

So I prodded around some more to learn some of the gears had been gunked up from the 3-years-plus of repeated use mixing butter-cream and cake batter and the agitator shaft that secures the paddle and wisk attachment had been bent...."Could that have happened that time MO stuck and jammed his hand in the paddle while it was mixing? No!" Anyway, I cleaned out the calcified coco-buttercream from the planetary gears and any grease that has been left there along with it. I used an extra toothbrush found under my bathroom sink. When I realized I wouldnt be getting any food grade grease -- those gears would be metal on metal now -- anytime soon, I decided I'd reached an impasse and I'd have to call, The Appliance Medic.

On the phone, the man sounded a bit grouchy at first, had been in business 50-plus-years and had somehow figured out how to never see his customers thanks to an Indian receptionist he had a sort of arrangement with. He said to leave her the mixer with thirty dollars cash and he'd open it up and take a look at what was going on. She asked me to fill out a ticket with some basic info about me and the machine. I did not have much a choice since he was the only person in an 80-kilometer radius who had that food-grade grease that I needed to get those gears turning smoothly again. She ripped the ticket-stub off and said I can call him if I didnt hear back for a few days... Huh? a few days, how busy could this guy be?!

Long story short, after a few phone calls back and forth, the man delivered on his promise. It seemed he had to find out for himself what I'd already carefully explained to him over the phone, something I can understand because I'd do the same thing. He threw in a few complaints about that motor-module upgrade they did... "I'd never buy one of these if I opened it up and see that inside!"

"Yea, You can't even replace any of the gears in it," I humored him.

Anyway, he'd cleaned up the gears even more than I could manage, lubed them up nicely and had that old lass spinning all smooth like. And so another thirty bucks later, I finally picked it up. As I did, I saw a similar mixer some ten-or-so years older in a banana yellow colour.

I started thinking of all the other appliances and tools the man must work on and finally concluded that it is truly a hallmark of owning something when you can take it to a man like that and have it fixed.