Inconvenient Conveniences

I used to hate it when my mother told me that it was time to hand-wash all of the glasses. You see, we had really hard water, and after a few weeks of running the dishes through the dishwasher, the glasses would get so covered in hard water stains that they were no longer pleasant to drink from. The best answer to that problem was to wash them all by hand to get the white stuff off.

Last night, we ran the dishwasher. When we opened it this evening, the glasses were covered by white grit and bits of dish-grime. We decided to give the convenient little machine a second chance and put the rinse cycle on again. No go. Our next course of action: make sure all of the movable parts inside are, in fact, moving, run the garbage disposal, refill the soap compartment with dishwasher soap, and run the dishwasher again, this time with the optional pre-rinse. Of course, I was doing anything I could at this point to avoid washing the dishes by hand, especially the dishes that had already gone through the dishwasher. Why is it that simple things like washing dishes by hand become so inconvenient when modern conveniences like dishwashers are available? I guess it is just the principle of the thing; why have a dishwasher if it does not do its job?