Growing up, we held onto the same two vacuums. Granted, my mom was a single parent of two kids after my parents divorced. However, she would refuse to get any kind of job, even part-time, and would get personalized items and go out to eat frequently; this is why I don’t feel bad in saying she could’ve afforded to get us new ones. My mom had us in her early thirties, so she already had the degrees and experience needed to land a decent job.

These two vacuums were toted house to house as we moved and were easily at least five years old. Those years didn’t fare well to the vacuums. Their suction was extremely weak — if it was there at all. All that using them would accomplish was moving the carpet fibers around. Nothing got picked up.

But Mom decided that it was our fault that the carpets weren’t clean. I even tried to sweep the crud out of the carpet and onto the tile floor with some success, but that wasn’t enough to convince Mom that the vacuums were the nonfunctional ones. 

At some point, after the umpteenth house that the vacuums couldn’t clean, Mom borrowed a vacuum from a friend and rented out a carpet cleaner. For the first time since we moved in — a few years at that point — the carpets were clean and things were actually getting sucked up. But when Mom returned the items, she went back to blaming us for the dirty carpets.

I moved out to a house I was renting from Mom and had to keep the vacuums with me. (The rental agreement is a whole other issue, and I deeply regret agreeing to that now, but that’s a different story.) After four years of renting from Mom, I only got to throw out the dreaded vacuums when I got kicked out and was able to get my own.

I am now no-contact with Mom, so I hope she has her own non-working vacuum and no one else to blame.

I work as a housekeeper for a senior assisted living facility. Every month, we run a fire drill for both the main building and the memory care building. The procedure is to go to the nurses’ station because there’s a panel that tells us where the fire alarm is being set off. Then, we move the residents from the affected area to the other side of the two sets of fire doors, and we evacuate the entire building if need be.

Residents are not encouraged to try to find their own exits because we need to know where they are and who is accounted for.

Every so often, fire system maintenance comes out to test and maintain the fire system, including testing the fire alarms. One day in the main building, the alarms were going off and the fire doors were automatically closing in response to the alarms for about six hours. The staff and the residents who were aware of it were getting annoyed.

Finally, sometime in the afternoon, the company finished up and left, giving us some peace. It was short-lived, though; about half an hour or so afterward, the alarm went off for a split second and the lights started to flash.

Rolling my eyes, I headed down to the nurses’ station just to make sure it wasn’t the company doing one last test. No one else showed up. The nurses were looking at the fire alarm panel in confusion as it was showing them that a “Resting Room, West” had the triggered alarm, but we had no such room.

Admin came down from their office to see what was going on. As my boss, the head of the maintenance department, and the head of nursing tried to figure it out, I waited. As they ran back and forth between the panel and the various alarms in the different rooms, no one else showed up. It was just me and the nurses who were already at the station.

When they pinned down the alarm, it turned out that it was a real trigger; the baker had left something in the broiler for a bit too long and it got smoky.

Admin was furious and called everyone down to the nurses’ station to give them the butt-whooping they deserved. One of the dining people was brand new and started to cry because she was getting yelled at for something she hadn’t been taught yet — apparently, someone had told her to tell residents to go out the closest exit rather than the fire evacuation routes — and she had to be consoled by the head of dining away from the meeting.

The head of maintenance decided to run a fire drill again that day to drill into peoples’ heads what they were supposed to do. That was the fastest drill I have ever seen take place since I’ve been there.

(In the liquor store I work in, I notice an older man wandering around the store looking very confused. I ask if I can help him find anything.)

Customer: “Do you have Rivendell?”

Me: “Rivendell?”

Customer: “Yes, I’m looking for Rivendell.”

Me: “Um, I don’t know if we have that here. Are you sure what you’re looking for is called ‘Rivendell?'”

Customer: “Yes, Rivendell.”

Me: *hesitantly* “Sir, I believe Rivendell is a city from The Lord Of The Rings.”

Customer: “Oh.”

(We pause and stare at each other for a moment. He pulls his phone out to call the person who sent him to the store. What was he looking for? Zinfandel.)

This story is part of our Lord Of The Rings roundup!

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