If You Give a Garage Door Remote a Jiggle

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."

I had a similar experience happen to me last week as I 

tried to help my grandma with her garage door remote.

It goes a little bit like this:

If you give a garage door remote a jiggle with a screwdriver, 

then you'll probably move something that wasn't meant to be moved.

Once that something is moved, the remote won't get the garage door to open.

If the garage door doesn't open, you'll have to use the pin pad just outside of the garage.

If you have the use the pin pad to open the garage, 

you might get a little annoyed and want a new remote.

If you want a new remote, then you'll go to the Home Depot, where you're sure there's someone there who can help you.  He'll probably hand you two new remotes that look just like the one you already have.  Since they look just like the one you already have, you probably won't notice until you get home that the model number is different.

Once you notice the model number is different, you might take the battery cover off and see if you can program the remote anyway.  Whenever you try to do something like this, you end up calling customer support.  When you call customer support, you'll find out that the new remotes you bought aren't compatible with your garage door.

If you want remotes that are compatible with your garage door, you'll probably have to go back to Home Depot to get the model they told you when you spoke to customer support.

Once you're at the Home Depot, you'll hope that they take back the remotes you bought, even if you already opened one of them.  When they let you return the remotes, you will be grateful.

When you are grateful that they let you return the remotes you bought that weren't compatible, you will notice that you weren't the first person this happened to.  You will notice that almost all of the packages holding the remotes have been opened before.

If you notice this, you will feel better about yourself, knowing that you're not alone.

Once you've got the new remotes, you'll want to program them 

so you don't have to use the pin pad to open your garage door.

When you start trying to program them, you'll realize that the instructions are for a newer garage door opener, so you'll probably end up calling customer support.

Customer support will talk you through how to program your new remote.  They will probably let you know that when the red light doesn't flash when you push the reset button on the opener that you have a broken circuit board on your garage door opener.

When they tell you that you need a new circuit board, they will probably tell you the store closest by where you can get one.  Once you get to that store, they'll probably ask you if you have the circuit board with you.  Since you didn't want to break anything else, you probably didn't take the circuit board with you to the store.  They will then tell you that they can't help you.

Once you've been told that you can't be helped at a store, you'll think to call a repairman to see if you can be helped at your house.  When you call them to see if they can help, they will probably tell you that they'll come by the next day.  Since they won't be coming until the next day, you'll probably close your garage.

Then, when you try to open your garage again using the pin pad, you will realize that pushing the reset button on the opener with a broken circuit board caused the connection with the pin pad to be broken.  If this happens, you will have to rummage through the house to find the key to your emergency release on the garage door.

Once you find the key on your key ring, you'll wonder why you take that key with you everywhere.  Then you'll put the key into the garage door and activate the emergency release.  

When you do this, you'll be able to lift up your garage door.

If you're able to lift up your garage door, you'll probably be inside trying to fix it yourself when the repairman gets there the next day.  When the repairman sees everything that you've tried, it probably won't take him long to recommend that you get a new garage door opener.

If the repairman doesn't charge you for his short visit, you will probably be happy.

You will then realize that this means you need to return the second set of new remotes that you bought.  Having to return them to the store will make you tired.

Once you are tired, you will decide to hire someone else to install a new garage door opener.

When they install the new opener, they will probably have to install a new pin pad so that it is compatible with your new opener.

When you get a new garage door opener, chances are you'll get two remotes to go with it.

If you get two remotes to your garage door, you'll probably end up losing one of them.

If you lose one of your garage door remotes, then you'll only have one.

And chances are, if you only have one garage door remote, 

then you'll want to jiggle it with a screwdriver.