Jammed Garage Doors for Dummies

Jammed Garage Door

Remember the bad old days of content farms, when anyone who could string together an English-language sentence – and more than a few who couldn't – could "contribute" to now-defunct websites like Bubblews.com and AssociatedContent.com? Well, some of their work still remains out there in the niches created by Leaf Group for the old eHow.com content. Why anyone would think that a dorm-dwelling college junior would know "How to Open a Jammed Garage Door"¹ is beyond us, but that's precisely what Joshua Benjamin² pretended to know for HomeSteady.com.

Our staffers looked at the question and figured that there are lots of different reasons a garage door might jam. A broken spring... a bent track... a jammed lock. Benjamin, however – presumably because Daddy had handled all the garage repairs at home – went to a real-estate "how-to" site and harvested exactly one possible cause: the garage-door opener doesn't work.
Yep, according to Josh, all you have to do if you can't get the garage door open is,

1. Find the "pull-cord on your garage door opener's track" which will "allow you to pull the door open manually." Never mind that you don't "pull" the door open, you lift it.
2. "Pull the cord to disconnect it from the door opener."
3. "Have your assistant lift upward on the garage door while you pull backward on the cord to guide it back along the track." – Wait, what: you pull in the release cord? Like hell you do!

The biggest problem with Josh's "solution" is that it's not a fix for a jammed garage door. It's a fix for a power outage, in which case your electric opener won't work; or a fix for a malfunctioning opener. If the door is actually jammed, as in the image above, Benjamin's instructions will be of abso-friggin'-lutely no use.
That, dear readers, is why Joshua Benjamin is the proud owner of his first Dumbass of the Day award. Something makes us think this won't be his last...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_8000939_open-jammed-garage-door.html
² We wonder what Josh's last name is...

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