Oh, my holiday altercation with Kitchenaid brand stand mixers.
We have a Kitchenaid mixer. It came with aluminum whisks and dough hooks, which don't dishwash. So I splurged on a 150 dollar set of stainless steel upgrades. They arrived, and I test fit them - they attached! And being the wise, old, fool that I am, I discarded the original attachments in a ceremony over jack daniels laced eggnog.
So then, Christmas Eve, we go to attach them and whip up a bunch of dough to make puff pastry, which is how one might make a raspberry turnover. Alas, the little attachments are barely too small to reach the bowl! And so everything is asunder, a bowl of un-kneaded dough.
Fortunately we live in a country that really rewards consumerism, and so 75 minutes later on Christmas Eve itself, I was back from the store with a replacement Kitchenaid, the 'Artisan' series, which I wisely spent a brief moment verifying would double my sunk-cost fallacy in 150 dollar attachments.
I hop into the shower, and my wife starts kneading the 6 cups of dough. Our ceiling fan wafts air in from the kitchen, which generally ends a shower prematurely for wont of sprinting to confectionary delights. This time, I spelled a burning motor. A moment later, my hands were feeling the motor casing for heat: blistering hot! Of course, being an infrastructure engineer for the public cloud, I instantly knew that this was 'bad' and turned the device off quickly.
"Ahah!" I declared victory with a sardonic undertone, "This mixer voids the warranty for more than two cups of flour, with the speed above 'low', for any dough kneading!"
Well, we ended up going back to the Kitchenaid professional. It's got a speed control issue and needs a new controller board. The gearbox often breaks little gear bits off and also requires repair on these. And many of the newer models have a plastic cases that warps under extreme heat - some describe this as a safety design feature to protect the metal gears, and others say its a cheaper component and unintentional downgrade. Either way, the parts are user accessible and replaceable. People who rely on these devices will apparently keep extra parts in anticipation of their failure, to carry on with minimal downtime.
And yes, there is another box of 150 dollar attachments somewhere in the mail, to replace the aluminum ones I brazenly tossed into the recycling bin. And yes, I lost the packaging for the ones too-small. So my friend gets a set for his artisan I confirmed he randomly owns sheepishly, and I get the original functionality back; I end up with exactly what I had, plus also a lesson hard-earned, for the low cost of 300 dollars. There is no age limit on feeling dumb :D Happy Holidays