Diaper Pail FAIL

The Diaper Genie is not a magical man in a lamp that will grant you 3 baby poo wishes. No, instead the diaper genie is a poorly made plastic craptastic trash can of doom that will make your life a living hell or awesome depending on its mood, and it will rob you and take your wallet after it ransacks your nursery and dumps baby diapers all over the floor.

All of our parental friends sung the praises of the diaper genie as a life saver, as it seals all the diaper smells into a hermetically sealed sausage of plastic. We took their advice, but we took it to the next level and got the Diaper Genie II, supposedly the next evolution in the fight against the robots for the future.... er wait, in the diaper smell protection racket.

After about a week with the diaper genie, things were going smoothly. The DG and I had an understanding. Charlie would crap his pants, and I would take said pants and shove them into DG. DG would then protect us from Charlie's sulfuric discharges. I would then empty DG of the diaper sausage it had created and prep it for another round. However, newer isn't always better.

In the middle of the second week, apparently I angered DG and it broke on me, trapping a bunch of diapers above the seal, and a bunch below. I looked under the hood, and realized I had no idea how to put the contraption back together. A spring had popped off and some plastic pieces that I had no idea how to rearrange were laying on the inside. After a frantic search for the original instruction on using it, I found a picture that explained how it was put together. After an hour or two of futzing, I had apparently appeased the DG, as it went back to working as it was supposed to. All the extra diapers were stuffed into the top of a sausage wrap and my need for a hazmat suit was temporarily sated.

Cut to week 3. It broke again. And this time I noticed something fun. A little tiny plastic knob that was sealed onto the base of the genie had snapped off, causing it to perpetually break after 2 days of use. Rage filled my soul as I realized I was going to be trapped in a endless loop of sausge repair and toxic fumes, defeating the very purpose of the DP. I was determined to poor all my anger into the fine customer service representatives at playtex, the makers of the diaper genie. After finding no warranty information online, I assumed the worst about playtex. I predicted a phone call where I was put on hold for 30 minutes, and then they would decline my request for a replacement genie.

So I called them, enraged. After pressing a billion numbers to find a live person, I was put on hold. I knew it. They were gonna screw me. 18 minutes later, I finally got ahold of one of their evil service representatives. We'll call her Sharon. Sharon was appallingly nice, frustratingly understanding, and was unnervingly responsive to my issue. I had no way to channel my rage into her. She disarmed me, and offered to send a replacement genie immediately upon my sending in the old one with the free shipping label they send to me, and assured me that my experience was not the normal diaper genie experience. Additionally, she's sending along some coupons for DG sausage liners for my troubles

So maybe the diaper genie can still be magic. I'll keep you posted. In the interim, pray Charlie doesn't poop much.