> the reality is I've already sunk about 6 hours total into the whole operation
That's a bit of a sunken-cost fallacy.
Here is a device that is going to be used every day for the coming 5 to 10 years, with a least 3 useful functions that cannot be accessed, and it's going to annoy you every time you use it.
Some devices simply have to work without friction, and that is worth spending home maintenance time on (and our hard-earned cash). Dishwashers, washing machines, printers..
Life is too short to waste time and energy on those, and I would argue that the energy, time, friction and annoyance you are probably going to encounter on the lifetime of that device is probably more than the 6 extra hours that would have been spent returning this unit.
Just my 2c, from the sideline, not walking in your shoes.
Jeff has 5 kids (mentioned in the video). I'm surprised he had 6 hours to fluff around with a dishwasher in the first place. I have 2 and certainly am careful about how I spend any free time I manage to find.
I didn't watch the video, so I didn't know the specifics, although he did mention a tight schedule and children in his post.
But especially in such a case, I still believe that the general point stands. If time and energy is tight, you cannot afford to have friction points due to the appliances you use daily, because the friction they cause is a perpetual reoccurrence that is really energy draining.
I understand that time is short and budgets can be tight, but on such things, put the effort and the money in to make sure they work the first time around, and to make sure they stay out of our way.
Life is too short to be the slave of the malfunctioning devices around us, and it's only once the re-occurring low-level friction points are gone that we generally realize how draining they can be in everyday life.