My Dog is Chelsea

Here’s the thing about “easy three-step” processes that makes me start screaming expletives while I’m installing a showerhead: very few things actually ever really ARE three steps.

Take toast-making, for instance. Here’s the easy three-step version:

1. Take out a piece of bread.
2. Put in toaster.
3. Remove from toaster.

Easy, yes. But does it make excellent toast? Quite the contrary. Here’s what you really need to do:

1. Take out a piece of bread. Or, if you have a loaf, slice off a toaster-sized slice.
2. Insert into toaster slot.
3. Set toaster to desired toast level and press down the button.
4. Remember to keep an eye on your toast. Overcooked toast is a buzzkill.
5. When the toast pops up, remove carefully from the toaster. DO NOT use a fork or you might die.
6. Slice thin pats of butter and use a butter knife to liberally apply butter to toast (both sides if you really want a good piece of toast). OPTIONAL: Apply jelly to one side only.
7. Serve.

Seven steps instead of three, but sometimes you just need a little extra detail to fill in the blanks.

The whole theory is that three steps sounds a lot more manageable than seven. Which may be helpful for people trying to pick out a detachable showerhead at Lowe’s, where you’re confronted by about 37 different varieties of what seems like the exact same product. “Three-step installation? Sounds great! I’ll buy it!”

Easy, peasy — right? First you remove your old shower head (pre-step 1), then you follow the easy-three step process for affixing your new one, and then you turn on the water (post-step 3). Voila! you’ve got a glorious shower in three-ish steps.

Or not. First, what the heck are you supposed to do with those little disc-screen thingies that appear to be intended as some sort of water filter? The instructions do not mention them at all. Are they optional? Or, if you do not use them, will you suffer from an inferior shower?

Then, there’s that tape-like stuff that you’re supposed to wrap around the threads of the thing your screwing in (step 2). The instructions do not address what you should do when the tape gets all twisted up and becomes more of a string of dental floss than a piece of tape. Luckily, the kind man at Lowe’s had the foresight to sell you an extra roll and you use that.

Now your showerhead is screwed in, the hose is secure and there’s a tape-like product kinda-sorta wedged in at all connection points. Do the instructions tell you to get a pair of pliers and tighten the connections? No, of course not, for that would add another step. Instead, you’re done! Good work! You turn on the water to give your new showerhead a test-a-roo.

BAM! Water barrels out through the joints, spraying not only the bathroom walls and ceiling but also your proud little face. Expletives fly; the dog, who has been watching the whole installation process carefully, bolts; you scramble to shut off the water.

Your bathroom is now soaked AND you need to redo steps two and three.

In the end, three steps turned into twelve (thirteen if you count washing the towels you used to soak up the water) when it could’ve been only seven. Wouldn’t you rather be supplied more information than you need than not enough?

Yeah, me too.

________

*Not really.