Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Domestitus

I saw an ad in the local paper yesterday that Hitachi are getting out of the domestic electric goods market in Australia. Things like TVs, vacuum cleaners, VCRs, video cameras, washing machines and the like. This sent a cold shiver up my spine because once upon a time I was for a while the state service manager in that area for Hitachi. It was in the early 1980s so really we are talking about a quarter of a century ago. How time flies.

It was a tough job. I came to realise that the Japanese work ethic was to have most employees do the work of at least two people. There was no internet in those days and stock levels were maintained via a computer terminal which was in the eastern states. Each week a two inch thick paper printout would arrive by courier to tell me what spare parts were not in stock anywhere in Australia. There were thousands upon thousands of parts for hundreds of very complex consumer items, and sometimes the wait would be months for parts to eventually arrive from Japan. It was very frustrating for me. Overall, I think many of the the products were quite good quality for the times, but designs were constantly changing, and the uncertain parts catalogue expanded accordingly.

I grew to hate the telephone because every time it rang there was someone on the other end complaining. That's one of the things service managers have to handle - whingers. Eventually I decided to quit. I think I've related this previously. The straw that broke the camel's back was when a women confronted me and gave me a good old serve of abuse because I'd rejected a warranty claim on her video recorder. She had said she'd stood a pot plant on it and watered the pot plant. I came home that night and discussed the incident with my wife. Earlier in the week I'd experienced a similar situation with a claim on a portable radio/audio tape recorder full of beach sand and seaweed. We jointly decided it was time for me to resign. Life was too short to put up with such crap. I gave notice the next day and have never regretted it. But I still flinch whenever the phone rings, or I see a mention of Hitachi in the media.

There have been a lot of dead electrical goods sent to landfill since those days - billions of dollars worth. I'd guess that not many devices I knew in my days at Hitachi are still operating. They were mostly analogue circuitry - some extremely complicated. Now pretty well everything is digital and by accounts is failing just as reliably. But a lot of stuff has become so cheap that repairs are never a consideration. Faulty items under warranty are simply replaced completely. The inevitable redundancy of domestic electrical goods is a much more significant environmental problem than plastic bags in supermarkets.

This brings me to our microwave oven. I think it's our third, and is still doing what it's supposed to. One of the first things Australians learned about microwave ovens is that eggs can't be cooked in their shells. They explode. But yesterday this former service manager wondered if an egg was removed for it's shell and placed in a bowl of water, surely it would cook okay by poaching. I'd felt like a poached egg for breakfast. Well I can tell you that eggs still explode when done this way, so don't try it.

My wife was out, so naturally I cleaned the inside of the microwave oven. What a mess - there were a few traces of what looked like baked beans too. I gave up on the idea of a poached egg for breakfast.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!