Brent, the Dirt Devil, and the Office Cleaning Lady

Every now and then, I've blogged about the goings on in the office suite our company rents from Greedy Lizworld Landlady in New York City, but the story I'm about to tell really takes the cake...

Back in December, Brent was planning a trip south with Fitz to visit his in-laws over the holidays, and he wanted to buy a nice Christmas present for Mrs. Brick. Now, while Brent has exquisite taste and would have preferred to shop at Tiffany or Chanel, Fitz and the Brick Family have a tradition of practical Christmas gifts. Brent's in-laws are also very green and energy-conscious, and Mrs. Brick had mentioned that she was most interested in how to avoid spending energy on cleaning her home.

To give you a sense of what Brent was up against here, the Brick family finds unusual ways of saving energy in and around the house. While their home is on a nice acre or so of land, the Bricks don't own a gas or electric power lawnmower...instead, they have two goats, Lance and Thelma, who are in charge of keeping the backyard trim without wasting energy. When the kitchen floors get a little dirty, the Bricks call Lance and Thelma in from the backyard to lick up the spills. But for Christmas 2007, Fitz's mama was looking for a gift that would let her modernize her housekeeping routine without wasting energy.

The good news is, Brent was able to find a better way for the Bricks to save energy. He went online and ordered a Dirt Devil AccuCharge Stick Vac. It uses 70% less energy than traditional vacuums, making AccuCharge the first cordless cleaning technology to earn Energy Star approval. Sounds like a happy ending, right? Well, the story doesn't end here.

As he frequently does, Brent had his Dirt Devil AccuCharge Stick Vac shipped to our office here at LizWorld NYC, and it arrived in a shiny, well-labeled Dirt Devil box...if he had shipped it south to the in-laws, the gift would have been no surprise for Mrs. Brick. In addition to being greedy, our LizWorld Landlady is nosy as all get out. She saw the box in the mail room, decided that Brent and Rex and I were dissatisfied with LizWorld's Macedonian cleaning lady, and fired her on the spot. Brent came in early the next morning to find the cleaning lady weeping in our office, trying to explain the situation in broken English, mostly involving a lot of pointing at the box and the words "no good, no good."

Brent went straight to Greedy LizWorld Landlady's office and explained that the energy-saving Dirt Devil was a Christmas gift for his mother-in-law, and demanded an immediate call to the president of the cleaning company to reinstate our cleaning lady who had done nothing wrong. Our cleaning lady was so grateful that she took Brent out for a festive, traditional Macedonian brunch in which few words were spoken but a good time was had by all, including a helping of goat cheese fritters in honor of Thelma and Lance.