TIL the office fridge has a secret ice maker that nobody knew about

I work as a independent HVAC tech so I do service calls at all kinds of places. Last Tuesday I was at a dental office fixing their AC unit in the break room. I had to pull out this old fridge to get to the panel behind it. While I was moving it I heard this weird rattle. I pulled the fridge all the way out and saw there was a lever on the back I never noticed. I flipped it and ice started dumping out of a little door on the bottom. Turns out this fridge had a built in ice maker that was just never turned on. The office manager walked in and her jaw dropped. She said they had been buying bagged ice for the water cooler for 3 years. Has anyone else found a feature on something at work that was sitting there unused forever?

3 comments

3 Comments

emmaclark1d ago

Oh come on. You really expect me to believe nobody in that office ever thought to look behind or under the fridge in 3 years? Not once. That's not finding a hidden feature, that's just people being lazy and never cleaning behind the appliance. Also why would there be a random lever on the back of a fridge that just dumps ice out? That sounds like a bypass switch or something, not a normal ice maker setup. I bet if you actually tried to use it regularly you'd find out why it was turned off in the first place. Probably floods the floor or makes weird noises.

ruby_henderson361d ago

The lever is usually for a bypass on older Frigidaire models, I found one behind a rental fridge that dumped ice but also had a clogged drain line that flooded the drip tray. My advice is test it over a sink first with the fridge unplugged, because if water sits in that line for years it can grow mold or freeze up and crack the valve. A lot of offices turn those off after the maintenance guy gets tired of cleaning up the mess.

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the_ruby1d ago

Wait, isn't that lever actually just the water filter bypass on some models?