Saying good bye to an old, faithful appliance

We all complain about poorly made products. But I've got to be honest today, we are putting out to pasture my still working Mr. Coffee four-cup coffee maker.

This is a coffee pot that I purchased in March 1995 after my second wife and I parted company. I went to Sears in Flint and in about 10 minutes purchased a new television, a vacuum cleaner, an alarm radio, a computer and the now soon-to-be-retired coffee pot.

The salesperson was agog as I pointed to one appliance after another with, "I'll take that, I'll take that, I'll take that...."

Part of my hurry was that my editor at the time was sending me out of town to cover the capture of a young boy who had killed his twin brother the day before in Flint. I was in the process of moving out of the 2,000-square foot marital home into my 568-square foot apartment in Davison.

Time was short, but I needed to get up and running.

So, back to the $11 coffee pot, which by the way, survived by far all the other appliances I gobbled up that day.

So I did a little conservative math about my well used coffee pot, which was used virtually everyday and sometimes more than once:

Pots made: 4,745
Gallons of coffee made: 741 (95,000+ ounces)
Cost of pot per pots of coffee: 1/5 of a cent per pot
Total number of days the pot was on (based on a 24 hour day): 198 days
Number of carafes broken and replaced: 5

And remember, we're not retiring it because it's broken, but because the cost of a new carafe (we just broke another one) is nearly the same as a new coffee pot.

So when you look at the picture above, say a little "wow" to some great American engineering and notice that the new pot in the background is also a Mr. Coffee. This time it cost $13.