Some investments sound far better in the boardroom than they turn out to be in practice. Fixing processes that ain’t broke with untested technology usually turns out to be one of those examples.

What would you do if your workplace decided to direct funds in the direction of useless technology over its hard workers? One person recently complained about their real-life example of this on Reddit. Here’s what happened.

Robot hoovers who’s idea was it?

I work in a hotel, and I have a genuine question for whoever sits in the head office meetings approving this stuff.

Have any of you actually used these things in a real hotel?

Not in a showroom.

The answer to this is likely obvious.

Not in a demo video.

Not in a perfectly clean flat with laminate flooring, no furniture, no guests, no hair, no dust, and no corners.

An actual hotel.

It’s going to be a resounding no.

Because from where I’m standing, these robot vacuums are one of the worst investments I’ve ever seen.

Our hotel is relatively small and we have about eight of them.

Eight.

That feels like an insufficient replacement for a cleaning staff.

At roughly £600 each, that’s around £4,800 worth of robots wandering around the building looking confused.

Now imagine a larger hotel.

20 robots?

Oh, yikes.

That’s about £12,000.

30 robots?

That’s £18,000.

That’s a brutal budget addition.

And for what?

So they can spend 40 minutes slowly driving around a corridor while somehow missing the places that actually need cleaning?

Our corridors are so narrow that two people can barely walk side by side.

That’s a traffic jam in the making.

Housekeepers are constantly moving trolleys, brushing against walls and skirting boards.

Guess where all the dust, fluff, hair and rubbish ends up?

In the corners.

Seems like the obvious down side here.

Guess what robot vacuums are terrible at?

Corners.

So the robots spend ages cleaning the middle of an already-clean corridor while the dirt sits untouched around the edges.

That could certainly never fly in a larger hotel.

And then comes the maintenance.

There’s always something wrong.

Always.

And the demand to fix them can’t be met yet.

One won’t charge.

One gets stuck.

One keeps spinning in circles.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so frustrating.

One refuses to start.

One has a brush jammed.

One has a sensor error.

It’s a bigger myriad of problems than most think.

One has decided it’s no longer participating in society.

It’s gotten to the point where an engineer is regularly coming in because there’s constantly something needing attention.

Meanwhile housekeeping still has to get the job done.

They’re getting the short end of the stick in all of this.

So what happens?

They end up needing a normal vacuum anyway.

The problem is there aren’t enough normal vacuums because management has apparently decided the robots are the solution.

This puts the human staff in a bind.

So now you’ve got multiple housekeepers sharing one corded vacuum between several floors.

Every day becomes: “Where’s the vacuum?”

People are trying to turn rooms around quickly, guests are arriving, everyone’s under pressure, and instead of making life easier, the robots have created a whole new category of problems.

As is so often the case with untested technology.

And that’s the part nobody seems to measure.

Not just whether the robot technically vacuums.

But: How much staff time is wasted dealing with it.

Time is money as most people know.

How much frustration it creates.

How many arguments start because equipment is being shared.

How much stress it adds to housekeeping.

That should be a first and foremost concern.

How much cleanliness suffers when corners are constantly missed.

How many guest complaints and poor reviews might result.

At some point you have to ask:

There are a whole list of things that should be asked.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to buy several decent vacuums and let the housekeepers clean properly?

Because right now it feels like the robots haven’t replaced the work.

They’ve just added extra work.

Until the money starts to reflect this, they won’t believe it.

And the thing that really makes me laugh is that somewhere, someone probably approved this project after seeing a spreadsheet showing huge efficiency savings.

Now that thousands have been spent, nobody wants to be the person who says:

“Actually, this was a terrible idea.”

Well…yes.

So everyone carries on pretending the future of cleaning is a fleet of £600 robots that spend half their day stuck under furniture while housekeepers run around the building looking for the one working vacuum.

Maybe the robots are saving money somewhere.

I’m just struggling to figure out where.

Someone needs to be brave enough to say these things to the people who manage the money!

Let’s see how the Reddit community responded to this grievance.

The comments noted this pattern frequently across the board.

Others pondered how this is going to continue to play out.

One person was simply baffled by the whole thing.

Another shared their own personal philosophy on the vacuums.

But ultimately, the necessary validation was provided.