My Robot Vacuum is Like a Bad Pet

Every morning I wake up at around 7am and run through my morning routine. That always includes going down to breakfast and doing some light reading. At 8am our robot vacuums wake up and start their 90-minute cleaning cycles. Without fail, if I am reading in the dining room while I finish up my oatmeal, a vacuum will leave the living room and try to clean under my feet. If I try to read in the living room, the beast will stay in that room and annoy me until I go somewhere else. Does that sound familiar to those of you with pets?

Sometimes I will escape to my office which requires going down into the basement. Fortunately robot vacuums can't negotiate stairs and so the one from the main level will stay on there and not try to follow me. That doesn't keep it from annoying me though. Sometimes it will get stuck and call out with an R2D2-like beep asking for rescue. Other times it will get suck up a lamp cord going forward and backward like a small dog trying to dominate its favorite stuffed toy. I didn't think robots could be capable of such lewd behavior.

Today my wife moved the vacuum from the kids'-bedroom level and put it on the master-bedroom level. You wouldn't think there could be much trouble our bad pet could get into. There is. Not long after the robot started doing its thing, it discovered my acoustic-guitar stand. It pushed the stand over, guitar included, which made a slight racket as the guitar neck hit the wall. The vacuum got tangled in the stand and tried to free itself by moving forward and backwards. Once again, it looked like it was humping something while my guitar cried out like it was being molested. I used my foot to nudge the robot off the guitar stand only to have it head back in that direction. I didn't know if I should squirt it with water or just move it to another part of the room. I decided on the latter only to have it head right back to my guitar. I had to move it several times before it got the hint to get back to work.

logically I know the robot vacuums are not sentient beings. That doesn't exempt them from seemingly nefarious behavior though. It makes me wonder if there are behavior classes I can sign my vacuums up for.