Letter to President Obama #4 | Subject: Robotic Maids.

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing you with yet another pressing policy concern. I was watching a television program called The Jetsons and I was fascinated by many pieces of technology on the show, but one thing in particular caught my eye—the robotic maid. After the show was over, my cat walked out from using the litter box, throwing cat litter all over the place with each step. This meant I had to vacuum. Because of my cats, I have to vacuum about thirty-seven times a day. (If I were I vacuum company manufacturer, I’d send cats to all of my clients. Because if you have a cat, you need a vacuum. It’s a perfect marketing ploy. Or maybe there’s a conspiracy here, maybe vacuum companies are run by cats?)

Anyway, like most Americans, I have a manual vacuum, but its headlight scares the cats and I think my girlfriend’s afraid of it too (I don’t think she likes the noise), so she always insists that I vacuum. So I finally decided to get a robotic maid like on the Jetsons; I called up the local department store and asked them to send me the most advanced robotic maid they had. This seemed to confuse them a bit, but after I insisted that such technology existed, they acquiesced; a week later, there was a small box on my doorstep.

My robotic maid was a lot smaller than I expected, but that didn’t bother me at first. I had been thinking of what to name my robot ever since I called the department store, so I was pretty bummed out when I saw that it already had a name—Roomba. I hadn’t decided on a name yet, but I’d narrowed down the field. I wanted to name my robot after someone I didn’t like, because that’d make ordering the robot around a lot more fun. I had decided to name the robot either Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. I don’t like those guys. (I mean, how much fun would it be to yell, “Hey! Sean Hannity/Bill O’Reilly” go take out the trash! Yackety-Yak! Don’t Talk Back!”) And then the little robot would wheel away, doing your bidding. It’d be great!

So I thought about renaming it, but that didn’t seem fair. I mean, once something has a name, you can’t take that away. (This is why I was so mad about Pluto getting called a “dwarf planet.” I mean, imagine being Pluto, The Planet and having to change all of your IDs, your bank account; I mean, what if Pluto were on some sort of beer-league softball team and its jersey said, “Pluto, the Planet” on the back? Then it’d have to get it changed to “Pluto, the Plutoid.” How embarrassing (and redundant)!

Anyway, to alleviate my disappointment about naming my robot, I decided to dress it up in a maid’s outfit. This seemed appropriate, but it was a lot harder than I thought. I made a black and white costume for it, but it ended up looking more like a round nun than anything else. So I gave up on that, and I told it to start vacuuming. It didn’t move. So I read the instructions, and it turns out I had to use a remote control. This seemed a little archaic, but OK. Then it starts vacuuming, sort of. Actually, it just started driving in circles; I thought it was either drunk or broken. (My uncle was drunk once and then decided to mow the lawn; it looked a little bit like that.)

I called up the department store where I got it, and they said it wasn’t broken, that’s how it works, which I thought was outrageous. After getting nowhere with them, I thought about bringing the Roomba to a doctor; maybe it had vertigo or something. Before doing that, I decided to put myself in the Roomba’s shoes. I decided that if I had lived for who-knows-how-long in a sealed-up box, I’d probably be hungry. So I gave my Roomba a cookie. The transformation was amazing! First, of all, it loves Girl Scout cookies. After it had a snack, it did whatever I told it to! It’d vacuum in any pattern I wanted, even those intricate lawn patterns like you see at the Major League Baseball All-Star Games!

I’m telling you all this because I know the White House probably has a few Roombas and I bet you think yours are broken. They’re not! You just need to feed them cookies! I hope this bit of information helps you keep the White House clean, and I’d encourage you to adopt this technology for other areas with a lot of floor space. Perhaps the Library of Congress?

Thank you for your attention, Mr. President.

Brett Ortler


This is letter #4 to Mr. Obama. I'll be sending a letter a day.