“Funny” is probably not the first term you would associate with carpet cleaning. Neither would I – after more than fifteen years in the industry, I associate it with hard work, tough competition, and constantly trying to stay on top of your appointments. But life offers you more than a few moments when you cannot help but smile.
On a sleepy Saturday afternoon with not much going on, I received a phone call from a prospective customer. It took me ten seconds to understand that the young-sounding woman on the phone was desperately trying to stay calm but was on the verge of panic or a rage attack. The most bizarre thing about our conversation was that she didn’t want to book a carpet cleaning job but to get a consultation on whether her living room carpet could be salvaged at all.
Don’t get me wrong – many customers ask me if they should invest their money in cleaning and maintenance or buying a new carpet. I always give them my honest opinion, depending on the item’s condition. In 90% of cases, a single hot water extraction procedure is enough to change a room’s appearance thoroughly. But this sounded different – like the carpet had been in perfectly decent condition, and then something happened to it.
I am not going to lie – the case provoked my interest. It was either going to the address to check what the hassle was about or filling in tax forms. I got the lady’s address and headed for the northeastern outskirts of Oakwood Park, where she was living. When I arrived at the cosy, two-floor detached house, I was greeted by a pretty lady in her mid-thirties, who introduced herself as Anne. I think she had calmed down a bit, and I could sort out that the emotion I had heard on the phone was not panic but anger, which was somehow reassuring.
“Let me show you the crime scene!” she said with a sigh of resignation, which startled me a bit. What on Earth had I gotten myself into? A Southgate-based episode of Dexter? When I stepped through the living room door, however, I could hardly suppress my laughter.
As it turned out, Anne was the proud (though not at that particular moment) mother of three beautiful children – a 12-year-old girl and 4-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. She had gone grocery shopping at the Southgate Food Centre, about one mile away. Thirty minutes to the store and thirty minutes back, another half an hour of shopping and a quick coffee break at Harris & Hoole – she had barely been away for two hours. In the meantime, her older daughter, who had been left in charge of the twins, had glued herself to her phone (shocking!) while the two monkeys had gotten busy with their drawing markers in a hurry.
The living room carpet was white, and Anne had kept it in perfect order – no visible stains or traces of dirt. Having said that, I was looking at a modernist masterpiece – something that would make Salvador Dali or Marcel Duchamp proud. There was a brown elephant, a black horse, a multi-colour house under a bright yellow sun, and something resembling a blond Predator – the twins’ rendition of their mom. If Anne hadn’t got home in another hour, the whole carpet might have turned into a canvas – now, it was only a third of it.
“My husband is a police officer, and he is on duty, but I was hoping my daughter would hold the fort for a couple of hours. So… What’s the verdict?” she asked tentatively.
“Have you considered signing them up for an art class for gifted children?” I asked nonchalantly. We looked at each other for a few seconds and burst laughing. She nodded as if to say, “What am I to do with those two?” The fact was, the carpet looked much worse than its actual condition. A concentrated stain removal treatment was going to remove the marker, and if necessary, an additional hot water extraction would deal with any residue. I had worked on carpets in much worse condition and brought them back to life – this ill-conceived art exhibition was heading for oblivion in a very short while.
When I told Anne all that, she could hardly believe it. “Let’s do this”, I said. “Let’s book you for tomorrow. I don’t think I will need more than sixty to ninety minutes to do the job. I will not charge you a penny if a single square inch of marker remains on the carpet.” It was an offer she could not refuse.
The next day I got to meet the two budding artists. They were not particularly happy that their work did not meet their parents’ approval, even less so that I had come to delete it. But it had to be done. So I had to adopt the role of a barbarian, destroying a cherished piece of art. It turned out my expectations had been overcautious – the marker came out surprisingly easy with the stain removal detergent, and the carpet did not require additional hot water extraction.
With the job finished, I felt a bit ambivalent about the outcome. Who was I to stand in the way of creative expression? Hey, the elephant looked particularly cute! Anyway, who can now say that carpet cleaning can’t be funny?