Verbal Communication is Highly Overrated

I should have taken Spanish when I was in high school instead of French. And when I went back to college to re-learn French, I should have taken Spanish instead. Who am I kidding? I’m never going to visit Paris. I don’t plan to visit Mexico either, but I do watch a lot of TV and lately a bunch of commercials on the Hallmark channel are spoken entirely in Spanish. It turns out that I really need to learn some of the lingo so I can get along with my Roomba and survive in my own home.

Communication between humans and artificial intelligence is problematic. I reference here the word, “artificial,” including that little spy hiding inside my phone who calls herself Siri. My iRobot, Roomba, is a lot like Siri. AI is helpful but not hospitable. For example, Roomba doesn’t greet me when I wake up with a friendly, “Good morning, Sunshine. Welcome to another day.” She doesn’t have the common courtesy to mention that I really ought to shower if I want to avoid public rejection. She doesn’t tell me I’m welcome when I thank her for her hard work. Siri doesn’t either.

What? I’m a polite person.

It's fine. It’s not like I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her. I think the problem is that she isn’t bilingual and neither am I. She just yells at me in Spanish from across the house every time she gets herself in another pickle. Personally, I think she’s irritated that she doesn’t have hands and feet like me. She just has three little clusters of filaments, like plastic tentacles, spinning in all directions to help her detect dangerous corners and undigestible fabrics. So far, I’m not too impressed.

This week she lost her artificial mind and let out the longest string of Spanish words I have ever heard her utter. I wouldn’t recognize a Spanish expletive if I heard one, but my money is still on the likelihood that I heard some yesterday. I never know what the heck that little robotic floor sucker is screaming about until I sigh and get up to go investigate. Yesterday she wrapped one of her plastic tentacle things up entirely in the stringed fringe of one of my rugs. I had to cut her loose and wreck my rug to get her moving again.

I really liked that rug.

Setting her free was akin to surgery, it was so complex. She weighs a lot for a 14 by 4 inch disk that just rolls around on the floor. Holding her upside down over the trash can while I emptied her plastic bin was harder than normal with the weight of that rug pulling against us. When I finally removed the accidental appendage, I noticed that her fuzzy little rollers were clogged up with rug fibers and dog hair to the point that I realized she’s just been roller skating around my house and not actually cleaning much of anything.

This really chapped my hide. 

The entire reason I bought this model is because she’s supposed to be so good at picking up pet hair. I don't currently own one of those pet things, but I may possibly have another one someday, so it seemed like a wise investment. I sometimes borrow my daughter’s golden retriever just to practice, hence the telltale signs of pet hair trapped in her roller which should have been trapped inside her little trash bin instead.

Someone lied to me in Spanish.

I grabbed a pair of scissors, removed the roller with a quick prayer that I’d know how to put it back where I found it, and began the intricate and necessary work of cutting her free from more intestinal blockage. It was not pretty, but it would have been easier if I hadn't been holding my nose. When I finished, I realized there was a second roller completely clogged up with floor debris that needed my attention, too.

You know how prices have gone up in the last three years on everything from frozen fish sticks to SUVs, and despite the fact that we are paying double for everything, they won’t include instructions on how to use the built-in air fryer inside that million-dollar oven you bought because THEY THINK THE PAPER COSTS TOO MUCH TO PRINT THEM FOR YOU? 

Right. That’s the way my Roomba came, too. No directions included. It's like they knew I neither speak nor read Spanish.

So, unqualified and clueless as I am, I did emergency surgery on the fly with less than sanitary surgical instruments, cleaned out her entire digestive tract, and replaced her on her little home dock in the corner of the room where she could rest and recover. And that’s when, for the first time, she spoke to me in a language I understood.

She burped.

Well, it’s a start.