Many people have been addicted to the broom for so long that the idea of using anything else is frightening to them and they are resistant to change. Or, so claims Robert Fisk, who recently began using a floor sweeper in his own home despite his reluctance and trepidation. “I’ll be honest,” he says, “I got my first floor sweeper as a Christmas present. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do with it. It filled me with dread. What would I want with this thing? I wondered.”
Fisk clutched his old worn broom and dustpan in his hands like the familiar but inefficient friends that they were. He continued to use his broom, taking the time on his kitchen tiles and the hardwood floor in the rest of his house to gather up dust and miscellaneous items into small piles, sweep them into his dustpan and then dispense with them, all the while casting distrustful glances at his new floor sweeper where it stood silently in the corner.
“It used to take me at least an hour to clean all my floor surfaces,” says Fisk. “But it was what I knew. I didn’t know how a floor sweeper could help me. I was resistant to change.”
Then one weekend, his teenage daughter asked if she could have a slumber party, and a group of girls came over, giggling together and watching movies in the living room, eating microwaved popcorn and drinking soda. Fisk sat in his kitchen reading the paper and waiting for the girls to calm down and go to bed. He heard a small commotion and a clatter and jumped up, went into the kitchen. Someone had dropped an entire bowl of popcorn on the hardwood floor.
“I’m sorry!” said the girl who had made the mess, and he saw her moving quickly toward the floor sweeper where it still stood aloof in the corner. Before he could scream at her to wait and before he had the chance to get a broom, the young girl had the floor sweeper in her hand and within seconds all the popcorn was picked up. It seemed effortless, as if the girl were somehow magical.
“My whole world view was turned upside down,” says Fisk. He gazed at the floor sweeper with a new kind of awe. “So much for my old broom, I thought. I started using the sweeper from then on, and it took twenty minutes to clean my floors instead of an hour. Life has not been the same around here.”
