The Kirby Vacuum guy

A Moose operative appeared at my door this week, disguised as a Kirby Vacuum Cleaner salesman. Maybe it was a random visit, but maybe my blog has begun to touch a nerve. Anyway, I had never seen one of the “super-vacs” at work before, so my curiosity led me unwittingly to admit the agent into my house.

What followed was outRaygous. He buzzed his machine over my couch cushions and showed me the resulting crud on a special display filter in the Kirby vac. “Would you sit on this?”, he asked, brandishing the filthy filter. No, of course not, I said. He pointed dramatically to the couch: “Sitting on that is the same thing!”

I pointed out to him that if it were really the same thing, then all that crud would come off onto my pants whenever I sat down or onto the floor whenever I shifted the cushions, and then the crud wouldn’t have been there for his machine to pick up.

He was undeterred. Whipping out yet another of the 141 attachments that come with the Kirby, he vacuumed off my ceiling fan and showed me the crud on his special display filter. “Do you ever run that fan?”, he asked. Yes, of course I do, I said. He waved a finger ominously in the air: “Every time you turn the fan on, all that dust goes into the air and into your lungs!”

Of course, if all that dust went into the air every time I turn the fan on, then how would all that dust be there for his vacuum to pick up? But you can’t expect too much from one of Ray Moose’s men.

The one “demonstration” that really floored me was what he did on the carpets. He ran the Kirby vacuum cleaner over our recently-vacuumed floor for just two seconds and showed me a quarter-inch pile of crud on his display filter; he repeated this several times on different parts of the carpet. I’ve read about this kind of thing, but had never seen it done: the Kirby vacuum guy will come to your house, run your expensive vacuum over the floor, and then show you how the Kirby can still pull up crud that your machine missed. In fact, a vacuum salesman for some other brand did precisely that at my sister-in-law’s house and left her very upset about how badly she was cleaning her carpets.

Very convincing. What a super-vac! Almost he persuaded me to part with a great deal of money to buy the wondrous machine….

But after he left, I got curious. He had left a few of his display filters sitting around, so I jammed one into my own cheapie vacuum cleaner and ran it for a couple of seconds over the carpet that he had shampooed with his Kirby. I looked at the filter and—by golly, a quarter-inch pile of crud! I tried it again on the exact same place on the carpet and—same results!

In fact, you can take any vacuum cleaner and perform the same “demonstration”. Let your friend vacuum her floor with her machine, then take yours and show her that your machine can pick up all this crud that hers left behind! Just don’t tell her that hers can also pick up crud that yours leaves behind. As long as she doesn’t think to try the experiment in reverse, you might can sell her your fifty-dollar cheapie-vac for the “bargain” price of $500.

You see, carpets are just so gross that they always have piles of crud under them. Even if your friend has a wonder-vac, it will leave piles of crud in the carpet because that’s the way carpets are. The real explanation of the Kirby demonstration is not that Kirbys are so great, but that carpets are so bad.

I wonder if the Kirby man himself knows that his display is bogus.

Probably not. After all, he’s a disciple of Ray Moose. I almost hope he comes back….