While a Family Innocently Slept, the Roomba Was Smearing a 'War Zone of Poop' All Over the Living Room

If you own a Roomba robotic vacuum, you know they can be both charming and terrifying. While mine does a fairly good job of keeping the dog hair picked up, he does have a bad habit of going rogue on occasion. This past week I noticed that he has developed an odd fascination with the laundry room, while at the same time demonstrating a serious lack of curiosity about the baseboards in the kitchen. And he regularly locks himself in the downstairs bathroom and bangs on the door until I let him out. But after reading about one Little Rock, Ark., father’s experience with his Roomba this week, I PROMISE, I will never again say a negative word about my little robotic wonder.

Jesse Newton wrote on his Facebook page about the horrific carnage that he discovered after being awakened in the middle of the night by his son. The problem actually started the night before when the Newtons set their programmable Roomba to vacuum at 1:30 a.m., when the family was nestled all snug in their beds. Somewhere along the way their puppy Evie pooped on the rug in the living room. Newton wrote about the “pooptastrophe” that ensued, which he described as resembling a “Jackson Pollack poop painting.” He warned what can happen if you turn your Roomba loose on a pile of poop:

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.

He said he first realized there was a problem when his 4-year-old climbed into bed with him and his wife at 3:30 a.m., smelling poopy. He described his reaction:

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.

And that’s when the real nightmare began:

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 damn 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?

While it may have seemed like all fun and games for the Roomba, that late night joyride ended up being his last. After a trip to the bathtub (was it a drowning or an accident?) he breathed his last. Luckily for the Newton family, Hammacher Schlemmer agreed to replace the rogue robot—free of charge!

“So, mad props to Hammacher Schlemmer. If you’re buying anything expensive, and they sell it, I recommend buying it from them,” Newton said. “And remember – don’t let your Roomba run over dog poop.” Very sage advice right there.

You can read the entire hilarious (and terrifying) Facebook post on the next page.