Dyson, Dump. Made for each other

Three holes at the picture's top used to have rollers in them.

It was the last straw—Karla couldn’t release the latch that holds the waste cup on our Dyson vacuum cleaner. Over time, lots of parts of this beast were getting less effective and more difficult to deal with. From the first time we used it, I noticed that the entire power cord got warm. That means it was either too long or was made with too-small wire. As time went on, we constantly had to tweak things. Mostly parts were getting loose or not fitting well. One part that held a filter kept working loose, and the machine would lose suction. As we were vacuuming the floor, it would stop picking up dirt so we would stop and slam some other loose part back in place. Early on the machine lost some tiny rollers near the brush; where there were five, now there is one. As a result, the entire base of the machine scraped along the floor instead of rolling. A hinge pin broke so when we popped open the door at the bottom of the waste bin, the entire door fell off. Its hinge was made of the tiniest plastic bumplets; any engineer would tell you that it was designed for a very limited lifetime, even with the gentlest use.

I felt a great rush of satisfaction when finally I took the entire machine out the back door, raised it over my head and threw it forcefully onto the ground from the landing. It took almost five minutes to find and pick up all the brittle blue pieces of plastic that had flown up to 10 feet (3 m) in all directions, but that was a small price to pay. It’s off to the dump with this way-overpriced piece of junk, and I get to toss it one more time into the giant maw of the crusher.