# It's brand new! Annnd it's broke. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 1, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704 "2016-09-01T20:57:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/41 "2016-09-03T12:39:52Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > When I worked retail a guy and his buddy came in who was running an errand picking up a new high-end refridgerator for his wife’s new kitchen. No sooner had they loaded it up in the back of their pick-up truck and left that they were back in the store. > They wanted to buy another one??? > Turns out they weren’t too skilled at securing things and as soon as they got on the main road the fridge dumped out the back of the truck and was totalled. I saw something similar happen once. I was driving behind a pickup truck with a new washer and dryer in the back. The truck makes a left turn and BAM! Washer tips over. I don’t know if it broke anything, but I’m sure it wasn’t good for the machine. Or the truck bed. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/42 "2016-09-03T12:42:38Z")
My parents bought me very few dolls, so my grandmother and aunt decided that Santa would provide an assist. That year, at Abuelita’s house I found a rag doll and one which talked… for the two minutes that my cousin, William the Terrible, took to grab it from my hands, take it by the neck and give it such a bang against the wall that he dented the chest :smack: ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/43 "2016-09-03T13:22:10Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > When I worked retail a guy and his buddy came in who was running an errand picking up a new high-end refridgerator for his wife’s new kitchen. No sooner had they loaded it up in the back of their pick-up truck and left that they were back in the store. > They wanted to buy another one??? > Turns out they weren’t too skilled at securing things and as soon as they got on the main road the fridge dumped out the back of the truck and was totalled. > [@Catamount](#): > > I saw something similar happen once. I was driving behind a pickup truck with a new washer and dryer in the back. The truck makes a left turn and BAM! Washer tips over. I don’t know if it broke anything, but I’m sure it wasn’t good for the machine. Or the truck bed. Me too. Was sitting at a light just outside a Lowes store. The vehicle in front was a ratty small pick-up with a brand new deluxe front loader washer staring me in the face. Which wasn’t tied down and was sitting half on the bed and half on the open tailgate. Sure enough, the light goes green, he accelerates and the washer doesn’t. At about 5 mph it falls out of the truck and lands face down on the asphalt and slides to a stop. I jump out to help the guy. He’s a small Mexican laborer who spoke almost no English. And was doubtless sure he was A) fired, and B) not going to get paid for his last two weeks’ work. He was almost crying as we hoisted the now useless washer into his truck. The washer was probably only damaged cosmetically, but he’d trashed the big glass front door and the LCD control panel as well as bending and scarring a bunch of the sheet metal. Poor guy. All for the lack of some planning and 20 feet of their crappy giveaway twine to tie the thing in place. ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/44 "2016-09-03T15:18:02Z")
New house. Carpeted studio downstairs. Gallon of wall-paint. Enough said. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/45 "2016-09-03T15:38:36Z")
1978: After 30 days one of the decimal point LEDs went out on my brand new TI-59. It calculated correctly, but the light was out. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/46 "2016-09-03T20:00:04Z")
I took a model rocketry class in junior high school. The last rocket I built was a large 3-stager. I put a lot of time into making it look beautiful. Put it on the launch pad in a large, open field, fired it off … and it vanished into thin air. I mean, it went up very quickly, and disappeared from sight completely. Nobody saw the chute deploy, and if it ever came down it wasn’t in any place we could find. Three weeks of work gone in 1.5 seconds. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/47 "2016-09-03T20:07:04Z")
In 1979 I bought a Craftsman hand cart/truck Friday morning and exchanged it for a new one Saturday night. The axle was bent, one wheel almost destroyed, and it was generally trashed. They didn’t ask and I didn’t mention that I had used to to move just under 10 tons of hard back books I had purchased from an estate - basically a private library. I still have and use the replacement; I just use it in a more normal fashion. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/48 "2016-09-04T04:31:08Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > And this one was self-inflicted: > > When I was four and baby bro was two, we got Hoppity Horses for Christmas. Something in my little OCD brain told me to stab my horse with a sharp pencil to see what would happen: yup, instant horse deflation! > > I cried, I raged, I mourned . . . then an hour later did the same thing to baby bro’s hoss. Same outcome, same tantrum, this time augmented with anguished brother’s wails. I was a really weird kid. > > For those unfamiliar with Hoppities: [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/143059725635615794/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/143059725635615794/) They still sell something similar; my boys (5 and 2) seem to have races or cavalry battles where they hop on them and beat at each other. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/49 "2016-09-04T15:42:55Z")
This happened to a friend of mine in junior high school. He had just finished building one of the most difficult model rockets Estes made - the [Orbital Transport](http://www.rocketreviews.com/estes-orbital-transport-jason-vennard.html). He carefully put it on his bed and went to get his camera to take a photo of it, then turned around and sat on it. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2016, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/50 "2016-09-06T18:08:36Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > And that’s the story behind that single fridge magnet that never moves from one spot on my fridge. Ha! This wasn’t immediate, but it was a heartbreaker because it was a six-week-old car and someone else punched a hole in my bumper. I like to be the one to ruin the brand-new car. I hadn’t put my residence sticker on yet, so the right location for it became clear. ---
**Author:** ![Yarster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/7c8e57/32.png) [@Yarster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yarster)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/51 "2016-09-06T21:20:37Z")
For my 40th birthday, my wife bought me an RC Joint Strike Fighter, which I built over the course of two weekends, and then attempted to fly with no prior experience working with RC planes. As others have said, I got about two seconds of flight time before landing upside down on the asphalt it a blaze of styrofoam, broken servos, plastic, and metal. Somehow I was convinced it would be easy and that I didn’t need anything smaller and slower first. I’m still wondering if my wife was trying to teach me a lesson. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/52 "2016-09-06T21:28:53Z")
I wanted a high-quality wrinkle-free plain woman’s shirt, so I spent more money to get a Foxcroft shirt. It was a beautiful classic shirt of a pale apple-green color and perfect for work. I was too stupid to sort colors and the first time I washed it the black color from a new tank top soaked into the apple-green shirt and ruined it. I tried Oxy-Clean and other spot cleaners, but it was a no-go. Into the rag bin. Stupid teela. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/53 "2016-09-07T19:47:49Z")
It wasn’t brand new but was my first car and looked pretty good. It was a manual and I didn’t know how to drive manual. So I was practicing in my driveway by backing up and driving forward over and over. Except once I gave it too much gas, popped the clutch, and wound up backing off the driveway with the back fender against a chain link fence. It might not have been too bad but I quickly shifted into first and moved forward to get off the fence, which left big deep scratches down the fender. Lived with those scratches on my shiny red car for years. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/54 "2016-09-07T20:39:20Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > When I was just Weeowulf, my dad and I built a box kite. It was made of balsa-wood struts and glued rice-paper. It took us quite a while to finish. We took it with us to Cape Cod (I can’t remember how we transported it there in the car - maybe we built it there). There was a stiff breeze blowing on the dunes, and we took it out with maybe 100’ of string on the spool and let it go. > It flew down the dune, with the string going “ZzzzZZZzzzZZZ” until it reached the end of the spool, at which point it exploded into a zillion tattered pieces. This reminds me of two losses of brand-new toys as a kid. The first was a brand-new Gayla delta kite. It was a windy day, and I let the kite out higher and higher, finally getting to the end of the string. Unfortunately, the end of string was not secured to the cardboard tube, so when the string ran out, the kite flew off, and I never saw it again. ☹ The second was one of those Aerobie flying rings, which are supposed to fly really far. I threw it once in the small park next to our house, and it flew really far, so far that I never saw it again. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/55 "2016-09-07T20:48:09Z")
> [@Jennshark](#): > > 25-year-old Ford Impala **Chevrolet** Impala. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/56 "2016-09-07T20:59:52Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > I took a model rocketry class in junior high school. The last rocket I built was a large 3-stager. I put a lot of time into making it look beautiful. > > Put it on the launch pad in a large, open field, fired it off … and it vanished into thin air. I mean, it went up very quickly, and disappeared from sight completely. Nobody saw the chute deploy, and if it ever came down it wasn’t in any place we could find. > > Three weeks of work gone in 1.5 seconds. My story is not nearly as dramatic, but this reminds me of my son’s model rocket that he and I built together when he was in Cub Scouts. We launched it three times, starting with the smaller rocket “motors.” Both launches were flawless, with the chute deploying and everything. On the third (and final) launch, we used the largest motor allowable for that size rocket. It went really, really high, the chute deployed…and then it proceeded to drift, and drift, and drift…until it got entangled 100-feet up in a line of trees that were over a half-mile away. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/57 "2016-09-07T21:35:21Z")
I’ve bought a couple things via Amazon that _arrived_ broke. At least the microcut shredder was still usable once the crack in its hopper was glued together. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2016, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704/58 "2016-09-08T01:48:26Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > My parents bought me very few dolls, so my grandmother and aunt decided that Santa would provide an assist. That year, at Abuelita’s house I found a rag doll and one which talked… > > for the two minutes that my cousin, William the Terrible, took to grab it from my hands, take it by the neck and give it such a bang against the wall that he dented the chest :smack: My wife got one of those new Chatty Cathy dolls back when they first came out and she loved it to death. The following weekend her (male) cousin visited, pulled the string to make it talk, and the doll said “I love you”. So he smacked it against the wall and it didn’t talk after that. The happy ending to this is she has recently gotten into collecting Chatty Cathy dolls and found a place to fix the speech. She sent her doll to get repaired, so she can hear it talk again. Maybe this needs a new thread “It’s old and broken, and now it’s working”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-brand-new-annnd-its-broke/764704.md?page=2)