Dear Siemens,

Oh why must you embarrass me so?  With all the wonderful things you do like this:

and this:

why did you have to mix things up with your hand-held mixer?  My husband’s German-Czech grandmother banned me from her kitchen because of you.  Do you realize that?  Banned!  It was bad enough that neither of us knew a sentence in each other’s tongues, and because of the “incident” with your invention, I wasn’t even allowed to help with the dishes anymore.  (Not that I mind being prohibited from that particular job… but still!)

So tell me, oh great millions of engineers company.  What’s with the little switch on handheld mixers where people adjust the speed, anyway? Don’t you know you made it entirely BACKWARDS?  In all my 26 years, I had never seen a mixer spin faster when I pushed the switch toward me.  I’ve always pushed the switch toward me with my thumb to turn the mixer OFF.  But your mixer?  Ohhhh no.  You engineers are so funny.

There I was, getting the stare-down and feeling determined to do everything right.  I plugged the thing in, and the beaters started going.  The thing was on!  So I pushed the switch away from me and tried to turn the mixer off… like it would with ever other mixer in the world.  But you know what happened?  Of course you do.  You designed the thing.  The beaters began to roar even faster.

My instincts were sharp, you know.  I figured that if my efforts didn’t turn the mixer off, I just had to switch it the other way.  I immediately pushed the switch all the way forward in less than .00002 seconds.  (My mamma always taught me to turn things off when something goes wrong.  It’s like knowing exactly where the emergency shutoff valve to the toilet is–I KNOW THAT.)  But I did not know that one notch beyond OFF on your irritable little mixer was EJECT.  Was the Batmobile all the rage when ya’ll thought of that one?  Because let me just tell you.  Beaters whipping around at full speed do not gracefully float to the ground.  No.  They go flying.  Across the room.  They almost knock out sweet little grandmas that you’re trying to impress.  (They are not impressed.)  Then the beaters crash to the perfectly sanitized floor where they are immediately deemed dirty and needing a good bleach.

So dear Siemens, I hope you’re happy.  And since you’re a German company, I’m sure you could translate “Verrückt Mädchen!” because I’m pretty sure that’s what I became known as around here.

Sincerely,

A dissatisfied houseguest, Katie

P.S.  I might forgive you if you buy me one of those lovely upright KitchenAid mixers that are marked up to like 600-800 bucks in Europe (and they don’t even come with the free mail-in offer for attachments–sheesh).

(photos both from Siemens)