Vacuum Cleaners Don't Suck!

Well, yes they do. Wait... No, they don't. I mean they don't suck in the way you'd want them to suck, but on principle, they figuratively suck.

I'm not sure what the deal is. Vacuum cleaner manufacturers have made a killing off of planned obsolescence. Back in the day, when our vacuum cleaner would (inevitably) break, I'd take it in to some guy to fix it. He'd either laugh and tell me buying a new one would be cheaper or I'd wait for months for him to get around to it. In fact, one time I lugged our cleaner into a vacuum repair shop where the hard-to-understand owner tried to sell me a new one instead of repairing it "because he didn't want to deal with it."

I've never met a vacuum cleaner I didn't hate.

My long-time hatred for vacuum cleaners goes back to my youth. At the time, my then-wife decided to have a vacuum cleaner salesman call on us (to get our free trip to Branson for listening to his spiel {of which we never used; all the hoops you have to jump through to "qualify" just wasn't worth it}). This kid's tactics were shameless, using guilt ("Just look at the dirt I picked up from your cushion; I know you're better parents than that."), shame ("Do you really want your baby crawling in filth?"), lies ("Hmmm...let me call my boss and see if I can take off twenty bucks."), and other completely transparent ploys. Even though I was ready to boot the jackass outta our house, my wife bought into it.

So... For the incredibly low, low price of $1,200 dollars, we got the super-fantastic, highly deluxe vacuum cleaner of the century! Pretty horrible when  you have to take out a loan to get a vacuum cleaner.

Of course, the Super Megatron Vacuu-Suck 2,000 quit working after a month.

No wonder dogs hate vacuum cleaners so much.

It really doesn't matter how much you spend on a vacuum, they're all built to fail. If I was of a conspiracy bent, I'd say that vacuum cleaner companies secretly build their wares with a month-long shelf life. And clearly--CLEARLY--they're in cahoots with Consumer Reports. Why? Because--get this--Consumer Reports claims that the median life of a vacuum cleaner is eight years.

EIGHT YEARS??? I've rarely had one that's lasted a year. And that's a rarity. Our basement is pretty much a vacuum graveyard full of the corpses of long-dead cleaners. (Some day I'll figure out why I don't just toss them out.)

My vacuum curse isn't limited to me. Apparently the sins of the father have been passed down to my daughter. For the short period of time she's owned a house, she's gone through about six cleaners. One day, while she was at work, I attempted vacuuming for her and all the "cleaner" did was blow dirt around.

My wife said, "Did you read the manual?"

I rolled my eyes in disbelief. Everyone knows men aren't supposed to read manuals or instructions. If you do, you may as well hand in your Man Card immediately.

In 2015, a French law was passed that demanded manufacturers display how long their appliances would last. The French got one thing right (don't even get me going on Jerry Lewis). If that law were passed here, dozens of vacuum cleaner manufacturers would be put out of business, the stock market would crash, Democrats and Republicans would have a Kumbaya come-together moment, your basic end-of-the-world scenario.

Suck it, Hoover!

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