Adventures with Mr. Super

RHYS BOWEN:

There is a reason why Roombas cost five hundred dollars. It is because they are smart and they actually clean floors.  I had always held off from getting one. I have a cleaning lady who comes every two weeks and I can sweep and mop the kitchen floor with no problem. But I saw an ad on Facebook for a Roomba-like cleaner that was only around fifty dollars and I thought, great, maybe it can just sweep up the crumbs every morning. So I sent for it.

Well, after weeks and weeks of being notified that it was on its way from Shanghai, it arrived. And the manual, all two pages of it, looked like this. I don’t know about you, but I was none the wiser.

However I put it on the floor, turned it on and waited. Its little brushes started spinning and it raced across the floor at breakneck speed only to crash into the cabinets at the far end. Then it raced back, willy nilly and got caught up in the air vent by the French doors. After that it made pitiful progress, charge forward, crash, spin around, crash. When it came to bread crumbs its method of operation was to scatter them as far afield as possible. It had a penchant for going under the wine cabinet and not being able to get out, crash, crash, crash. And then under the chair on which I was sitting. Bump, crash, bump, crash until I finally freed it.

It reminded me of a cat when it gets its head stuck in a cereal box, or maybe Winnie The Pooh when he stuck his head in the honey pot.  Blunder, blunder, bump bump.

At the end of fifteen minutes I turned it off and examined it. Okay, it had been good at sweeping up dust. It had collected a little dust and a couple of dog hairs from when my daughter’s dog visited on Sunday. But the breadcrumbs were now liberally scattered over the floor, instead of just in one spot under the table where my messy husband sits.  And it had driven me crazy with its constant bumping into things.

So what have I learned? If it reads too good to be true, it is. It can’t handle carpet at all. It can’t even handle breadcrumbs. I’m not going to return it. The thought of filling in customs forms to send it back to China is not worth the effort.  So I will continue to run my Swiffer over the floor in two seconds and reject technology. And Mr. Super (yes, that is what he is called. It says so on his back. Notice I have identified him as masculine) can join the graveyard of forgotten appliances that John has ordered over the years: the sausage maker, the vegetable juicer, the ham slicer etc etc. I’ve learned my lesson.