It's bad enough when one of your beloved household companions takes a dump on the rug. But it's even worse when another rubs it all over the house.
Users of the Roomba report that when the robot vacuums encounter pet feces during their rounds, the devices are apt to perform the opposite of their intended cleaning purpose: They get poop everywhere.
One user, Jesse Newton, describes the phenomenon in a Facebook post:
"It will be on your floorboards. It will be on your furniture legs. It will be on your carpets. It will be on your rugs. It will be in your kids' toy boxes. If it's near the floor, it will have poop on it. Those awesome wheels, which have a checkered surface for better traction, left 25ft poop trails all over the house," he said.
Here's Newton's diagram:
According to a spokesman for iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, this kind of smear campaign isn't an isolated incident. "Quite honestly, we see this a lot," he told The Guardian.
"We generally tell people to try not to schedule your vacuum if you know you have dogs that may create such a mess. With animals anything can happen."
iRobot provided an additional statement to CNET via email:
"The large majority of iRobot customers who own pets greatly appreciate the help our robots provide with cleaning pet hair and rarely experience run-ins with pet 'messes.' Our guidance for customers with pets who are prone to accidents, such as a puppy that is house training, is to avoid using the Roomba's scheduling feature if a human is not present to inspect the floor conditions."