The appliance repairman recognized Mrs. G. when he walked into the kitchen. He had been to our house before, a little more than a year ago, and thought the address was familiar.

But something was different this time.

“New refrigerator?” he asked.

“Same problem,” Mrs. G. shot back.

Poor repairman. He walked into a rant that had been going on for six weeks. Longer, if you include the previous refrigerator, the one we bought in 2014, which he couldn’t fix. After seven problems in seven months, it was replaced with the refrigerator that now sits in our kitchen.

“What is it with ice makers that they always break?” Mrs. G. asked the repairman. “And there’s an ice ball growing in the vegetable chiller that could sink the Titanic. That isn’t normal.”

“Appliances these days are not made to last,” he said.

“I’ve heard that more than once,” Mrs. G. told him. “But this fridge is 6 months old, still under warranty. You know, you’re not the first person who got called about this problem. You’re the fourth.”

The repairman stared at her in silence, thinking.

“The last guy said we were overusing our ice maker,” Mrs. G. told him. “That’s ridiculous. There are only two people in this house.”

“That last guy was actually from our company,” the repairman said.

Mrs. G. is a force of nature when it comes to situations like this, when common sense has taken a holiday. If you arrive in her kitchen to fix something, she expects results. But the repairman’s comment required some mental sorting out for her to understand what he meant.

The ice maker went on the fritz in May, so we called the manufacturer on the mainland. A customer service rep immediately scheduled a repair, but no one ever showed up. When we reached the local repair company scheduled to do the work, we were told it was no longer working with the manufacturer. That would have been good to know, right?

This prompted an appointment with a second company. But none of its repairmen ever came to our house.

The refrigerator manufacturer then found a third company — which turned out to be the same one that had failed to fix our previous refrigerator. When the repairman looked at our new fridge, he concluded the ice ball was caused by the weather. And that we should use less ice.

Once again the manufacturer was apologetic, referring us to a “service specialist” and promising that the next repairman would understand the problem. When the next repairman stood in our kitchen, it was deja vu all over again.

“I can fix this,” he told Mrs. G. “I have a solution that works 50 percent of the time.”

We’re waiting for parts to find out.

When this whole thing unfolded, we blamed the appliance industry. Couldn’t anyone build something that worked?

Then we wondered: Doesn’t anyone know how to fix anything? Where are the repairmen?

It was a frustrating thought to ponder but a rant we could support. Remember the character created by American humorist James Thurber, the character who sees a unicorn in his garden? That would be Mrs. G. waving at the refrigerator and insisting it can be fixed.

And then I would tell her, “Dear, an appliance repairman is a mythical beast.”

Reach Mike Gordon at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.