The Greatest Sale I Never Made- The Story of a Broken Refrigerator

bigsambucca (64)in #story • 8 years ago

Many years ago, I trundled everyday to a large industrial shed for work. The walls were iron, as was the roof, and it was roughly a cuboid measuring about 20 metres square. The previous tenant had been a motor mechanic and years of oil still bruised the concrete underfoot. Currently the workshop was being used for fibreglass manufacturing. It was dusty, they don't call it "fibre" glass for no reason. The tiny carcinogenic fragments hung in the air for eternity and were ghostly visible as they passed through any sunlit area. Anything that didn't move for more than about an hour would begin to collect a fine layer of dust.

Slumped in one dark corner of the giant shed, was the fridge. Nobody knows where it came from, or how old it was, it was just there. And for as long as anybody could remember, it kept their lunch fresh and their beers cold. Behind it on the wall, l ines were painted above the mezzanine floor to indicate the high-water mark of the '74 floods that had violently swept through the city. I imagine the fridge calmly surviving that ordeal, feet planted firmly in the place where it still sits. It was big, solid and stained from years of service and neglect.

Then one day it simply stopped running. We guessed it was the motor that went, but realistically I would say the entire fridge died that day. The seals were stretched and hung loose in the jambs. Years of dust embedded into the decaying rubber. We had no idea how to fix it, or even if it was possible.

For some reason, it was decided that I should be the one to dispose of the metal corpse. I didn't much like the idea, as it was heavy, it was dirty, and that meant loading it up and driving it out to the dump. None of these things were particularly appealing to me, however with a little coercion some friends and I moved it. we moved it about 20 feet, out of the workshop onto the curb. Damn that thing was awkward to move. Not only was it heavy, but wherever it touched you, it marked you with grease or dirt or rust. At this point, we declared the task at hand too difficult and endeavored to finish it another day. And there it sat, outside the workshop, broken and busted.

It sat there for a few weeks before people started complaining. Apparently it was scaring away the customers, and a dilapidated fridge near the front door didn't look very good. I wasn't sure how much longer I could put off the inevitable. I would need to get a pick-up truck and hoist it off to the dump..But that could wait till tomorrow, and so I left it on the curb again that night.

It was sometime during the next afternoon, when the idea came to me. I got a large piece of white card and a marker pen, and began to make a sign. I wrote in large black bold letters :

and I stuck my sign proudly to the front of the fridge. It was universally greeted with scoffs and laughter. "Nobody is going to buy the fridge you fool, you're just trying to delay taking it to the dump". Although they laughed there was method to my madness, and I convinced my colleagues to give me 1 day to get rid of it. And so it was, like in the movies, I had 24 hours to perform an impossible task, and either the fridge went, or I did. Leaving work that night, I conjured up the strength to push the fridge a further 10 feet so it was perched right against the curb, and I placed it with the sign proudly facing the oncoming traffic. Then I smugly went home.

There was some confusion at the workshop in the morning, as the fridge had gone. Somebody enquired if I had come to work early in shame and finally taken it to the dump. The only person not shocked was me. I had a quiet smile. The fridge which had sat abandoned on the curb for over a month, took only 1 night left outside alone with a sign that said it was worth $100, and somebody stole it. Go figure. Human nature is a funny thing. Thank you.