What was supposed to be a free carpet clean turned into a three-hour hostage situation involving an $8,000 vacuum cleaner, a relentless Irish salesman, a cancer-to-dust comparison, and a wife who will never let me forget it.

---

The Friday before this all went down, a woman came to the door saying she was from a cleaning company. They were giving out free carpet cleans as long as we gave them a review afterwards. I thought, why the hell not, and accepted. I told my wife, Mel, about it that evening, and she immediately said it was probably some MLM scheme. Oh man, if only I had listened to her.

The following Friday, I get a call from some random number. “Hi John, we’re not sure we’re at the right address. Is it 19 Warili Street?” I realise it must be the cleaning company. They had the wrong address — which, in hindsight, may have been a sign from the universe to not go through with it. But no, I went ahead and gave them the correct one. I was already outside on the call, and about a minute later a white van pulls up. Two blokes hop out and come to the door. We exchange pleasantries, and then they head back to the van.

Soon they return — carrying this massive box between the two of them. It was at this moment I knew I had fucked up. I look at the box, see the big KIRBY logo, and it hits me: it’s a vacuum cleaner, and they are absolutely going to pitch me. Here we fucking go.

The first thing the older salesman asks me is my ethnicity. I think he was Asian too, so maybe he was trying to build some kind of rapport, but it still caught me off guard. What the hell? Then they kept asking, “Where is your wife?” I told them she was in the study, working from home. They said she should come out and see the demo. I kept telling them she was busy. They were really making a big deal out of it. I hadn’t been told she was expected to attend. Eventually the older salesman leaves his younger colleague behind to run the demo solo.

I get to chatting with this bloke and he tells me he’s from Ireland. Apparently there’s a competition within the company — if he earns the most points, he wins a trip to Bali. He already gets one point just for being able to pitch to me. Fair enough, I thought. It probably took him a good fifteen minutes to unbox and assemble this beast of a machine with all its various attachments and accessories. Before he begins the demo, he asks again if Mel is available. I say no, she’s working. He actually had to call his boss to get permission to continue the demo with just me. His boss agreed.

So he gets into the demo and starts showing me everything the machine can do, going through all the attachments one by one. He mentioned that Kirby was one of the first vacuum companies ever. That it appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire. That they held over 200 patents and were the only vacuum with vibration technology. I was thinking the thing looked antiquated and clunky. He also mentioned it had a kill switch in case a child’s finger gets caught in the suction area. That is something that would never have occurred to me — risk of death from a vacuum cleaner. Reassuring.

Next, he showed me the window cleaning functionality. He shot this white foam onto the sliding door, and it slid down the glass, taking some of the grime with it. He didn’t bother wiping it up, saying it would dry and turn into a powder. Then he vacuumed the sliding door track and proudly showed me the little bag of collected dirt, clearly expecting me to be impressed. I was not.

Then he assaulted the couch with one of the attachments and gave it a thorough going-over. There was admittedly a lot of dirt. I kept entertaining him, hoping he’d get to the actual carpet cleaning part soon.

Then he did the ceilings. After that, he got me to do the bedroom mattress myself, and I was genuinely shocked at how much dead skin it pulled through. I think he sensed a turning point, because he stopped and asked if I wanted to buy one now. I said no. Then he said, “Why don’t you go and get your wife?” I told him she’d say no. He said, “But she hasn’t even seen it working.” He seemed completely unfazed by my refusal.

Next up, he decided to compare our Dyson to the Kirby. He vacuumed a section of carpet with the Dyson first, then showed me the canister — barely anything in it. Then he did the same area with the Kirby. Vastly more dust and dirt. It was, admittedly, a superior result. Then came the pitch: “All of this dust is just sitting there, waiting to be inhaled by your lungs. It’s basically a health hazard.” He went on about how if you bought a fridge and it only kept 40% of your food cold, you’d throw it out. So why wouldn’t you do the same with your vacuum? It’s an investment. Oh yeah — I might have forgotten to mention this was an $8,000 vacuum. The Kirby Avalir Platinum.

After that portion of the demo, he asks me again if I’d like to buy one. Again, I say no. And again, he says we should get Mel out here so she can help make a decision. I say no, she’s busy working. He moves on.

Then he starts going on with this story about how if someone got cancer, they’d spend all their money on treatment because it’s an investment in their health. Then he related this back to the vacuum, saying it’s an investment in health and that leaving all this dust around is basically the same as not getting cancer treatment. I was truly amazed at this logic. I told him, “You cannot compare cancer to inhaling household dust. It is just not the same thing.” He hit me with some line about it being the same regardless and moved on.

He pulled out the turbo attachment next and switched it on. The thing was vibrating violently. He suggested we sand the dining table with it. I said no thank you — it had been polished and varnished recently, and I was genuinely concerned it would fuck up the finish.

Finally, we got to the bit I had been waiting for — the carpet shampoo. But he’d run out of bags, so he could only do a small portion of the floor. It ended up being roughly two square metres, and it was a pathetic job. Then he moved to the tiles and somehow made things worse, because he was wearing black-soled shoes and was leaving scuff marks everywhere he walked. I was internally screaming.

After that, he sits down at the table and asks me again if I’d like to buy one. Again, I say no. And again, he asks for Mel. I say no, she’s not available. He says he’ll get me a cheaper price through his boss. He makes a call, comes back, and tells me he can sell it to me for $70 a fortnight. I say no. Then he starts looking around the house and gestures at our things — we have nice cars, an expensive projector, nice stuff in general. Surely we have room to pay for the vacuum. I tell him no, it’s not accounted for in the budget and we don’t need it. But then he turns it back on me: “But I’ve shown you all this dust you’d be living with without it.” I say, well, we’re okay with that. He asks again — just get your wife out here so she can see it. I say she’s working, she’s busy, and she’s actually feeling a bit sick. And then this motherfucker goes, “Oh, she’s probably sick because of all the dust.”

Then I get a text from Mel: Tell him to go. As it turns out, Mel had actually been texting me the whole time, telling me to get him to stop. But I just couldn’t bring myself to be that direct because of how pushy and aggressive he was being. I read out the text from Mel, and this is where shit goes really south. He notices the little camera on the kitchen bench — the one we use to keep an eye on the dogs. He decides it’s been moved and concludes that Mel has been watching and listening to us the entire time. He then starts yelling insults. Poor Mel is in the other room, genuinely scared. He starts packing up and keeps muttering, “You wasted my time.” I told him, “Mate, you told me at the start that you wouldn’t get offended.”

I go into the room to check on Mel, and she is absolutely livid with me — and rightly so. For not defending her when he was hurling insults, for reading out her texts in front of him, and for letting some random stranger into the house in the first place. I apologised profusely.

The next twenty minutes were the most awkward of my life. He’s slowly packing up the system, and there is so much crap sprawled across the floor. I kid you not — roughly thirty or so little black cleaning bags, all covered in dirt. He has to individually take each one and suction them out using the Kirby into a bigger black bag. I could not wait for this hell to be over with. The noise of that vacuum haunts me.

It was so loud. Did I mention it was self-propelled? Because the thing weighed about 30 kilograms. Everything about it was awful. The handle system was flimsy. The cable management would shit me to tears. Its only saving grace was that apparently they last decades, since they’re made almost entirely of metal and are easy to repair. Decades of misery, essentially.

He finally finishes packing up and heads for the door, but then I realise he’d been dropped off. So he has to stand out the front and wait to be picked up. Mel comes out of the room and we hug, relieved that the ordeal is almost over. She forgives me. I keep checking the security cameras to make sure he’s actually leaving. After about twenty minutes, I go outside and confirm: the vacuum demon salesman is gone.

I swore to Mel that I would never do something like this again. I said I’d get a “No Salesmen” sign, and that under no circumstances will we ever — EVER — buy a Kirby.

I hope he never gets his trip to Bali either.