January is not my favorite month. The bright lights and cheerful colors of Christmas and New Year's have been put away, the weather turns cold, the days are short, and sunlight scarce. So, I feel like laughing, and I hope you do too. This is a short short story I wrote a while ago, but it still makes me smile.
CUSTOMER COMPLAINT
Interspace Robotic Corporation
800 New England Way
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dear Sirs:
Pursuant to your request, I am writing to explain further why we returned our Model 3300 Housekeeping Robot.
As advertised, the Model 3300, whom we named Gertrude, was a hard worker possessing in-depth, encyclopedic knowledge about nutrition, household chores and yard work. Her additional logic booster chip allowed her to make choices in the best interest of our family independent of any orders from us. The independent functioning of the logic chip proved problematic.
While Gertrude was correct that vacuuming at non-peak hours was good for the environment, placing less strain on the electrical grid, no-one in our family got any sleep on Tuesday and Friday nights during her 2:00 a.m. house-cleaning sessions. Similarly, shaving the dogs cut down on the amount of dog hair floating around various rooms but the dogs are still suffering from the trauma of being shaved bald in 2 seconds flat. One of the dogs, Sparky, continues to refuse to come out from under my daughter's bed except at meal and walk times. The other, Shadow, now considers every item possessing an electronic processing chip a mortal enemy that must be destroyed. Since Gertrude shaved her, Shadow has proudly defeated three laptops, two e-readers, four cell phones and one toaster, although why the toaster required an electronic processing chip to begin with is beyond us.
Prior to Gertrude’s arrival, like every parent, I had fantasized about placing my children on house arrest when they failed to clean their rooms or do their homework, but the logistics of such a move were problematic. The electronic location bracelets with accompanying smart phone app to enforce confinement which Gertrude designed were quite clever. However, the Department of Human Resources, Child Welfare Division, had problems with the electric shock the bracelets delivered whenever the children violated the terms of their confinement.
Gertrude’s presentation of her research on optimal nutrition was flawless but after seven days of tofu, fruits and berries for meals, we began sneaking out of the house to stuff ourselves with cheese fries and chocolate sundaes.
Gertrude also decided to improve the cost effectiveness of our landscaping. However, the neighborhood covenant enforcement committee found Gertrude’s solutions objectionable. Apparently, Astroturf, plastic flowers and plastic bushes violated neighborhood covenants. The committee members were also singularly unimpressed with Gertrude’s passionate dissertation and several follow-up demonstrations regarding individual liberties under the United States Constitution.
Four weeks ago, we returned home from vacation to find that the wooden floors and carpet throughout the house had been replaced with industrial strength concrete. Drains were strategically located throughout the house so that the floors could be hosed down instead of vacuumed or mopped. The floor and carpet installers we have since hired told us that Gertrude did an excellent job, as did the locksmith we called in to bypass the lockout system placed on our air conditioning system to prevent the thermostat from being set below 82 degrees. However, we are not looking forward to the payments on the second mortgage to reverse Gertrude's improvements.
Accordingly, we returned Gertrude to you.
Sincerely,
Jenny White
P.S. The covenant enforcement committee has asked me to remind you that the restraining order will stay in effect for 10 years.
