If there’s one thing in this world that consistently baffles me, it’s the relationship humans have with dishwashers.

These machines, which have been around for decades, provide no terribly specific indication of how they should be loaded, and their whole purpose is to WASH DIRTY DISHES, right?

And yet everyone will swear up and down there is one and only one correct way to put the dishes in (which is almost never the same from person to person), and will frequently add that the dishes have to be washed perfectly clean in the sink before entering the machine.

It seems like an invention meant to make our lives easier which has somehow only become fuel for arguments while eliminating no work, because of how we approach it.

I mean, take this story for instance.

AITA for telling my wife not to load the dishwasher.

So when we had our first child about four years ago my wife stopped helping out around the house.

Which is fine, creating life is bound to be a bit taxing.

And with breastfeeding at all hours of the day I understand you’d be too tired for anything else.

We used to have a 50/50 split, but this led to me doing almost 100% of “chores” cleaning, washing, filing & emptying the dishwasher, cooking etc.

Recently, like one or two months ago, she started helping out a little bit around the house again. Which led to todays big fight.

He proceeds to dish about the rest.

Our dishwasher isn’t the best (we bought it from Ikea about 7 or 8 years ago) and if you don’t put cutleries separated in their designated basket there is a 50-50 chance they won’t be clean when you unload the dishwasher.

Now my wife doesn’t have the patience for placing them in their place and just put them clumped together in the basket.

This results in me Having to unload the cutleries and reloading them separated into the basket.

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

So today I asked her to not load the cutleries and leave them in the sink and I’ll do it.

She said that she can’t just leave them there.

I said its fine I usually load the dishwasher about two times a day so they won’t be there for too long.

She got angry and said that it is just because I have ocd (I don’t) and that it will be clean anyway.

I said that our dishwasher is old and that it won’t be clean.

And here’s the real breaking point in question:

She asked why do I have mandate over how the dishwasher is loaded.

And this is why I might be the [jerk].

I said that since I’ve been loading and unloading the dishwasher for the last four years and still do it 90% of the time maybe we can just do it my prefered way.

With the added bonus that the cutleries actually get clean.

She got furious, stormed out of the house and haven’t spoken to me since (about 1 hour ago).

Alright so am I the [jerk]?

Let’s see what the comments have to say:

Most people thought he laid it out pretty well.

But like I said, NOBODY agrees on how to load a dishwasher.

Maybe a new one will fix this?

It won’t. We’ll be fighting about dishwashers for as long as there are dishes or water with which to wash.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.