topic Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe in Home

Roomba Pooptastrophe

RazorSharp — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 03:37:47 GMT

This is absolutely hilarious. A coworker shared this story on my Facebook page today:

So, last week, something pretty tragic happened in our household. It's taken me until now to wrap my head around it and find the words to describe the horror. It started off simple enough - something that's probably happened to most of you.

Sometime between midnight and 1:30am, our puppy Evie pooped on our rug in the living room. This is the only time she's done this, so it's probably just because we forgot to let her out before we went to bed that night. Now, if you have a detective's mind, you may be wondering how we know the poop occurred between midnight and 1:30am. We were asleep, so how do I know that time frame?

Why, friends, that's because our Roomba runs at 1:30am every night, while we sleep. And it found the poop. And so begins the Pooptastrophe. The poohpocalypse. The pooppening.

If you have a Roomba, please rid yourself of all distractions and absorb everything I'm about to tell you.

Do not, under any circumstances, let your Roomba run over dog poop. If the unthinkable does happen, and your Roomba runs over dog poop, stop it immediately and do not let it continue the cleaning cycle. Because if that happens, it will spread the dog poop over every conceivable surface within its reach, resulting in a home that closely resembles a Jackson Pollock poop painting.

It will be on your floorboards. It will be on your furniture legs. It will be on your carpets. It will be on your rugs. It will be on your kids' toy boxes. If it's near the floor, it will have poop on it. Those awesome wheels, which have a checkered surface for better traction, left 25-foot poop trails all over the house. Our lovable Roomba, who gets a careful cleaning every night, looked like it had been mudding. Yes, mudding - like what you do with a Jeep on a pipeline road. But in poop.

Then, when your four-year-old gets up at 3am to crawl into your bed, you'll wonder why he smells like dog poop. And you'll walk into the living room. And you'll wonder why the floor feels slightly gritty. And you'll see a brown-encrusted, vaguely Roomba-shaped thing sitting in the middle of the floor with a glowing green light, like everything's okay. Like it's proud of itself. You were still half-asleep until this point, but now you wake up pretty ****** quickly.

And then the horror. Oh the horror.

So, first you clean the child. You scrub the poop off his feet and put him back in bed. But you don't bother cleaning your own feet, because you know what's coming. It's inevitable, and it's coming at you like a freight train. Some folks would shrug their shoulders and get back in bed to deal with it in the morning. But you're not one of those people - you can't go to sleep with that war zone of poop in the living room.

So you clean the Roomba. You toss it in the bathtub to let it soak. You pull it apart, piece-by-piece, wondering at what point you became an adult and assumed responsibility for 3:30am-Roomba-disassembly-poop-cleanups. By this point, the poop isn't just on your hands - it's smeared up to your elbows. You already heard the Roomba make that "whirlllllllllllllllll-boop-hisssssssss" noise that sounds like electronics dying, and you realize you forgot to pull the battery before getting it wet. More on that later.

Oh, and you're not just using profanity - you're inventing new types of profanity. You're saying things that would make Satan shudder in revulsion. You hope your kid stayed in bed, because if he hears you talking like this, there's no way he's not ending up in prison.

Then you get out the carpet shampooer. When you push it up to the rug - the rug that started it all - the shampooer just laughs at you. Because that rug is going in the trash, folks. But you shampoo it anyway, because your wife loved that ****** rug, and you know she'll ask if you tried to clean it first.

Then you get out the paper towel rolls, idly wondering if you should invest in paper towel stock, and you blow through three or four rolls wiping up poop. Then you get the spray bottle with bleach water and hose down the floor boards to let them soak, because the poop has already dried. Then out comes the steam mop, and you take care of those 25-ft poop trails.

And then, because it's 6am, you go to bed. Let's finish this tomorrow, right?

The next day, you finish taking the Roomba apart, scraping out all the tiny flecks of poop, and after watching a few Youtube instructional videos, you remove the motherboard to wash it with a toothbrush. Then you bake it in the oven to dry. You put it all back together, and of course it doesn't work. Because you heard the "whirlllllllllllllll-boop-hissssssss" noise when it died its poopy death in the bathtub. But you hoped that maybe the Roomba gods would have mercy on you.

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel. After spending a week researching how to fix this ****** $400 Roomba without spending $400 again - including refurb units, new motherboards, and new batteries - you finally decide to call the place where you bought it. That place called Hammacher Schlemmer. They have a funny name, but they have an awesome warranty. They claim it's for life, and it's for any reason.

So I called them and told the truth. My Roomba found dog poop and almost precipitated World War III.

And you know what they did? They offered to replace it. Yes, folks. They are replacing the Roomba that ran over dog poop and then died a poopy, watery death in the bathtub - by no fault of their own, of course.

So, mad props to Hammacher Schlemmer. If you're buying anything expensive, and they sell it, I recommend buying it from them. And remember - don't let your Roomba run over dog poop.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

daisyk — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 03:46:23 GMT

Too funny! What a nightmare!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

sparklestar — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 03:49:53 GMT

That, my friend, was hysterical. Absolutely hysterical. I'm exhausted from laughing. I need sleep but I can't because ... well, I'm still giggling, laughing, and giggling.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

RoughDraft — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:02:50 GMT

Best post of the day. Woman, and I call you that wil deep respect, you really should consider a career in writing...a book, a blog, anything.

Thanks for a great belly laugh.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

Kachina624 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:24:44 GMT

Where's John @hckynut ? He was always a huge fan of Roombas. Hasn't mentioned them for a long time. He has a dozen or so cats. I wonder........

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

september — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:17:11 GMT

How funny! Now I know I'll never buy one of these, because my cat has a habit of vomiting on the floor during the night. I can only imagine what that would be like after the roomba ran over it.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

Sage04 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:34:32 GMT

I couldn't read the intire post because the thought of dog poop made me sick to my stomach. Is this a special Roomba that runs only at certain times ? I have had a Roomba for years and it only runs when I want it to. The only problem I have had with my Roomba is sometimes i would forget where she is and she might "die" under my bed and I have to "find" her. It is the BEST INVENTION EVER. We cant do without her. She has been to College a few times to clean my nephew's dorm. Yes she has a College degree. One day she was at my sister's and on the way home we kept hearing this voice saying "I need charging" my husband and i looked at each other and were about to leave the vehicle, then we realized it was ROOMBA talking. This family loves ROOMBA and ROOMBA loves us and yes we have a DOG who ignores ROOMBA.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

CAMOGIRL — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 04:37:07 GMT

You're right.... That really was hilarious!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

AKgirl2 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 05:17:34 GMT

Kudos to you for taking care of a really 'shi##y' situation throughout most of the night. We had a similar one, not with a Roomba, just an adult yellow lab, bad dia##hea, and light beige carpeting (was there when we purchased house) in an 18x24 family room. It was in front of an eight foot fireplace, and around the perimeter of the room in front of all the furniture. We got rid of that carpeting and put in oak flooring to match the flooring throughout the kitchen, hallway and entrance. That was a good thing😊

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

RazorSharp — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 05:22:20 GMT

Just to clarify, this wasn't me. As I mentioned in the first sentence of the original post, a coworker shared the story on my Facebook page. So fortunately, I did not have to clean the poop-stravaganza!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

sabra — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 05:32:11 GMT

OMG - That is one of the funniest things I've read in a long, long time. Absolutely hysterical - tears rolling down my cheeks. Thanks for posting this!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

Desertdi — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 09:42:56 GMT

I wonder what SIZE of a poop that little dog made? I ask because sometimes Kitty leaves a little "gift" around the house that exactly matches the floor in color..............

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

ID2 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 10:43:04 GMT

@Sage04 wrote:
I couldn't read the intire post because the thought of dog poop made me sick to my stomach. Is this a special Roomba that runs only at certain times ? I have had a Roomba for years and it only runs when I want it to. The only problem I have had with my Roomba is sometimes i would forget where she is and she might "die" under my bed and I have to "find" her. It is the BEST INVENTION EVER. We cant do without her. She has been to College a few times to clean my nephew's dorm. Yes she has a College degree. One day she was at my sister's and on the way home we kept hearing this voice saying "I need charging" my husband and i looked at each other and were about to leave the vehicle, then we realized it was ROOMBA talking. This family loves ROOMBA and ROOMBA loves us and yes we have a DOG who ignores ROOMBA.

I just got a Roomba 880 last week and yes, it has the option to schedule when you want it to run.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

cah — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 11:36:38 GMT

I have a Roomba also, and love it.
This was a great story!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

SilleeMee — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 12:17:20 GMT

LOL!!!! OMG!!!LOL!

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

PinkyPetunia — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 14:01:17 GMT

Who forgets to walk their dog at night!?! How does that happen?

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

willdob3 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 14:19:13 GMT

lolol...

I think I would have moved! Left everything and walked away...

And to think I have both a Roomba and a dog on my wish list...

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

Kachina624 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 15:10:34 GMT

@PinkyPetunia wrote:
Who forgets to walk their dog at night!?! How does that happen?

@PinkyPetunia wrote:
Who forgets to walk their dog at night!?! How does that happen?

Easy to accidently "forget" when it's snowing or raining outside.

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

chlema — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 17:25:06 GMT

@PinkyPetunia wrote:
Who forgets to walk their dog at night!?! How does that happen?

Well, sometimes we're just human lol

Re: Roomba Pooptastrophe

Mominohio — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 02:54:39 GMT

It's a little funny and a little horror.

I think we've all lived through something similar that is only funny to other people!

Mine was a very sick cat that was just beginning to practically come back from the brink of death. I didn't put her in the basement during the night as I headed off to bed, like is our usual nightly routine because she had been so sick and I wanted to be able to hear her.

Well, she was better enough to jump up on a ledge in the family room, knock off a lamp that had lamp oil in it (for power outages) smash it to pieces, throw glass and oil all over the tile floor, furniture, piano, etc nearby, then run through it and hide from me.

I too invented a new language trying to chase down a cat, clean her paws, force open her mouth to smell if she had licked up any of the lamp oil (anyone who owns a cat knows this is a life threatening series of things to attempt on a cat), then began the four hour clean up of oil and shattered glass that lasted till dawn.

Yep, those nights we'd just as soon never live again, and teach us simple things we will never forget (for me, it is to never leave an oil lamp full of oil when not in use!). Funny only to others!