hit it with a hammer

I recently came to understand the fresh-ground peanut butter machines at our grocery store. You flip a switch, and there's a satisfying loud grinding noise, and out comes your peanut butter. The peanut butter is *so good*, you don't even know.

Yesterday I was at the store, and I wanted to get some chocolate-chip peanut butter, for obvious reasons. I'm standing there having flipped the switch, but no chocolate-chip peanut butter is coming out.

Some helpful women, probably a mother and daughter, were standing there and they said, "oh, hit it with a hammer." I didn't have a hammer, and I didn't want to hit the presumably-sensitive peanut-butter equipment in the store. The mother wasn't so shy though, and found a big spoon and thwacked the machine a few times. It didn't help.

A store employee confirmed that yes, the right thing to do was hit the machine with a hammer. He went to get the Peanut Butter Technician, who came back with a big rubber mallet and thumped the machine pretty hard. And it worked, and there was chocolate-chip peanut butter.

Next step: we look for other applications for the "hit it with a hammer" technique.