Monday, December 13

Now I feel safer.

We got a new fridge the other day. It's my first ever brand new fridge: my last one came with the flat when I bought it. Anyway, the fridge has safety instructions, as you might expect, and I had a look through them for an entirely sensible reason: I wanted to check whether there was a minimum distance to be kept between the cooling things on the back of the machine and the wall. Apparently not. To discover that, I didn't half have to wade through some bollocks.

Now, everyone knows that fear of litigation and the technical stupidity of (a) corporate lawyers and (b) everyone else is turning these safety instructions a bit stupid. But this latest booklet has finally stepped over the boundary into out-and-out lunacy. As well as the warning not to put too much food in the fridge, as it could fall out when I open the door and disastrously injure me (thanks for that, Daewoo), there was this:

Do not spray water inside or outside the fridge/freezer, as this could cause fire or explosion.


Let's just be clear about this. If your kids have a water-pistol fight in the kitchen, and one of them hits the fridge with a small jet of water, and the fridge then explodes and kills them all, Daewoo's lawyers will respond with "Ah, you should have read the instructions."