We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years
bbc.co.uk994 points by rajeshrajappan 20 hours ago
994 points by rajeshrajappan 20 hours ago
Not as hugely generous as this story, but during his whole college professor career since the 70s, my father always took care that none of his students spent any major holidays alone and away from home, so we always ended up having 2 or 3 of them around for Christmas, the New Year, Easter... They were from everywhere around the country and the world, and it was so very enriching for me and my siblings. I had a huge postage stamp collection from the ever increasing well wishing mail that arrived. It's also kind of comforting to think that anywhere in the world you are not that far from someone that remembers you fondly.
That seems to be one of the things that some great professors do. I've heard of that convention from many colleges/universities.
At any university, look for the professors who act like benevolent citizens of the best of university ideals. They don't all do it in the same way, but they're some of the best.
I like to think of the university as a microcosm, and incubator, for how you'd like larger society to be.
That’s nice, I once ended up alone around New Year, a mix of being far away from family, busy with studies and not actively asking people around to join their events due to being shy.
One of my friends that lived nearby spotted me walking alone and invited me over. Another of her friends joined in. It was just the three of us, and it was much, much better than spending it alone.
When I was an exchange student at RIT and had just arrived from France a month before, one of the admin staff invited me and a friend in the same situation for thanksgiving because she didn't want to leave us by ourselves for a major holiday. I have fond memories of that kindness.
My dad said his grandfather always had a teenager or two at the dinner table who had no where else to go. Not just Christmas but all year. My parents did the same with a friend of mine and one of my sisters friends.
It's great to hear there are amazing people like your father. We need more of these people in this world.
My son has ASD, and non-verbal so far. No matter how I prepare for his future, I still have my fear about his well-being. I can only pray, when I died, hopefully, he can live happily and feel loved :'(
Crazy to see this story on the front page of the BBC and now Hacker News too! Ronnie was an awesome guy, and absolutely a part of Rob and Dianne's family, not a "maid" as another comment suggested.
More like a brother/uncle helping out around the home than any kind of maid.
When you read this story - your heart warms & your eyes gets filled. It is crazy nice feeling. You feel like this world is such a better place. Yet, it hurts - to know there are so many homeless that our system needs corrections.
It also reminds me that systems can’t fix situations like this. The system of “care,” as the story alludes to the autistic person experiencing in their youth, often looks a lot more like warehousing the people on the margins of society, often in unpleasant (and almost always in institutional) conditions. Some kinds of humanity can only ever happen person-to-person, and it’s a great treasure for everyone involved to encounter such an opportunity and choose to take it up.
That’s an easy cop-out and disagree as an European with stronger social nets. But yes this is still a heart warming story.
This story takes places in Europe, so it sounds like those social safety nets aren’t really doing shit here, as OP implied.
I think that the _current_ systems are incapable of care, but that doesn’t mean systems can’t be in general.
I often think that they’re held back in large part by people who say “we can’t” rather than building a solution
It’s extremely easy to say that things could and should be better, but it’s about as useful as saying that things “can’t” be done.
The problem isn’t that nobody wants things to get better, it’s that we disagree on how to get there. This has literally always been the case.
Of course things could be better. Life could be perfect. Lacking this solution you’re hand-waving, it’s useless drivel.
You see far more horrific cases in the current US system where minors are cared for by members of the general public at their homes. This self selects for both ends of the spectrum people who want to do good and very bad actors.
That’s the core issue so often ignored, we need systems to deal with people at their best and their worst.
"Incentivizing" doesn't really fix it either, as people take avantage of the incentives. You do have to make it possible for the people who do care to be able to, though.
Here in Belgium there's a village that's famous for doing this. Currently there's about 100 people there who are living with another family. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezinsverpleging_(Geel) If you translate you can read about it.
Since you're from the "local" area (Belgium), do you happen to know why the numbers have declined over the years? From this article [1] it seemed like it was hugely popular pre-WWII (3,750) with that article quoting 500 in the modern era.
Less acceptable currently, other alternatives? Still seems famous and popular, just not quite as much as it used to be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geel#A_model_of_psychiatric_ca...
My parents once took a struggling man in. I think he stayed with them for about three years, up until the moment I was conceived and my mom started planning for a future for our family and helped him get into a housing project. For all of my life before adulthood this man would show up once in a while on his racing bike for coffee, talk and proceed to stay for dinner. He was kind, funny and a tidbit strange. His life's story had more drama than a soap opera, but you wouldn't know it. After my father died I proceeded to look for him, but never found him. I still search online for him once in a while, fully knowing he probably isn't alive anymore and probably wouldn't use online anyways. There is some story in my head that he probably showed up to my dads doorstep once on his racing bike to find other people living there, but was too shy to ask for details. A trace lost.
You could always ask the police to see if they anything about. Or Hire a detective if you want closure.
I read stories like these and it inspires me to think a bit deeper about things. Recently I told a friend that a good compass in one’s life is to seek out what gives you a lump in your throat, the rest are just words. Merry Christmas friends.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025sr0 has a bit more information in it, but its in a radio show with a bunch of other bits and pieces. From memory its in the last quarter of the show.
He has a really lovely welsh accent.
The other thing to do is they did this largely because its what they felt was the right thing to do.
It’s a lovely, wholesome, heartwarming story… but it also made me sad that there wasn’t something more reliable than incredibly-unlikely-serendipity to help this man (who as well as autism, had a difficult family background and may have been educationally subnormal [for want of a more 2025 phrase]) and ensure that he was at least safe and happy, and maybe even relatively productive.
Beautiful story but with a sad undertone.
A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations.
It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be all over the board. Some of them are capable like ronny in this story and they can hold down jobs. But others need 24/7 caregiving in order to survive. Unfortunately I don't think those with severe autism survive for long when they become homeless.
I hope this story at very least gets people to view the homeless a little differently. They aren't all there because of vices or failure. A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities. It was good on this story to highlight that Ron had problems with gambling. Autism does, in fact, make an individual more prone to various addictions.
My point in writing this, please have some humanity about the homeless. I get that they can be inconvenient. They are people and they aren't necessarily bad people due to their circumstances.
Happy Christmas, folks!
> please have some humanity about the homeless
In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas.
Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have very specialized and advanced skills, which can sometimes be applicable to making a living (like programming, or visual design).
However, we're "different," which often leads to being shunned/traumatized by neurotypicals. I got used to folks eventually walking away from relationships, for no discernible reason. Used to really bother me, until I figured it out. Now, I just take it in stride, and appreciate whatever time I get to spend with folks. If anyone has seen The Accountant (the first one), there's a scene, near the end, where Ben Affleck's character is considering putting the moves on Anna Kendrick's character, but remembers his father, admonishing him that people will always end up being frightened of "the difference," and he sneaks out, instead. That scene almost brought me to tears, I could relate so well.
For some folks, it's much worse. They can be relentlessly bullied, abused, locked up, or shunned, which leaves psychological scars that manifest as antisocial behavior, so they are never given a chance to show what they can do.
Non-neurotypicals can receive bad treatment from neurotypicals. But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. The corollary of not knowing when they're offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance - which is actually a lot; although it's understandable that this is not obvious.
> The corollary of not knowing when [neurotypicals are] offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance
This assertion seemed to go unrecognized in the other replies; I really think it earns a moment of reflection.
> But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant.
I didn’t get that at all from what they said tbh
I'm more cynical. I think most people really are intolerant. They have their culture which they perhaps unconsciously equate with being good or morally right and anyone who doesn't follow the complex unwritten rules is shunned or abused. Those rules may be mostly good but nobody questions them all, yet almost everybody either enforces them or tacitly tolerates their friends enforcing them. This is probably necessary because if everyone went around inventing their own standards for behavior, people wouldn't get along very well and the outcome of "most people get along with each other most of the time" is itself valuable - it just comes at the cost of those who can't understand it. I think most people can't comprehend the possibility that somebody who seems reasonably normal and intelligent doesn't understand the rules so they must be acting maliciously and deserve punishment.
The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
> initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times
I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated like that we learn on a deep level that we are just not part of the rest of society. Sure, there is a "spectrum" of how good a person with a disability might cope, but at the end of the day, if I throw myself into the masses and have random interactions, I always learn the same lesson: random strangers will keep treating me in a very uncomfortable way. Sure, many people try their best. Some even come across as creepy by trying so hard. But the statistics never changes. I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.
Ultimately, nearly all of us will develop some physical or mental impairment due to accidents or aging.
In a society based around ranking others perceived worth and value, having a disability gets conflated with "being a burden". Silently overcoming a disability and adapting to an unsuitable world becomes the "hustle culture" variant of modern-day working life. Praised for being ultra self-sufficient and "paying our way".
It's harrowing how people prefer donating resources over exerting mental effort to bridge simple psychological boundaries in understanding the different needs of others, especially for disabilities (which nobody chooses to have). I often wonder if the root of this is the individual fear it could happen to us. By exercising empathy, we are reminded that ourselves and our families are vulnerable to disability at any time--from birth to life events this second (injury, illness, luck), existence is vulnerability.
Our intrinsic fears combined with societies lacking safety nets and breathing space has created a positive feedback loop for hyper-individualistic living. Our own bubbles. I try to do the opposite, but it's not easy.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
I'm going to tangent a bit here but so far in my life, after observing lots of people discussing things related to this, every single person feels this way.
Every person thinks they're atypical. That they're experiencing things other people don't. That they're different in some way to "everyone else".
Exactly what this means is up to the reader, but it sure implies some interesting ideas here.
Hi there - I’m really sorry about your negative experiences. I read the replies to your comment and felt sad that I didn’t read one that recognised how much work you’re putting into what sounds like an indifferent society - and how unfair that is. I also hope I’m not crossing the line of too much/trying too hard. Frankly, it sounds like a shit place to be.
> The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.
If the reaction is actually knee jerk/automatic before the upper brain(?)/concious tolerant/empathetic side can take control, is someone a jerk for having that primal response first. I consider myself very tolerant and empathetic and I do my damndest to be that way, but my wife says sometimes it’s not the first thing that shows. I’m trying as hard as I know how. Should I be condemned?
I may try my hardest to be a great musician, but I'm not and surely won't be anytime soon. It's accepting your current shortcomings that may lead to improvement, not considering yourself good just because you try hard.
It's difficult and it's fine to struggle with it.
> Should I be condemned?
You shouldn't be condemned, but as I wrote, people should stop the hypocrisy and virtue signalling of pretending to be so insanely tolerant if they have such a primal response.
If they didn’t have a negative response, it wouldn’t be tolerance, by definition. Tolerance means engaging with something you have a negative response to.
It's not hypocrisy or virtue signaling if people are choosing to be tolerant.
If someone is standing near the train tracks and sees a train approaching a stalled car, they should be praised for choosing to run over and help even if their initial instinct is to get as far away as possible.
>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions
it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.
> people will always end up being frightened of "the difference"
I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster.
The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.
Around the same time, much of the US also stopped building housing at the rate needed.
I'm pretty sure there would be far less homeless if there were a lot more homes around.
don't worry, brother, come to Reddit where all we autists live in harmony
People like this really are at the mercy of fate, and the people they come into contact with throughout their lives. Its so unfair. But thankfully this story had a good outcome.
Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions.
... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because their family didn't want or could not provide care for them.
And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1].
And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers.
In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shock...
No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost.
Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.
> reason was cost
Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.
I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.
But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
> I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities.
Maybe, but we do also need a way to deal with people whose problems can’t be managed in a family setting.
If a person is prone to violent meltdowns with little provocation, or can’t help but steal from their family to feed an addiction, family caregivers aren’t going to be enough.
>No, the reason was to save tax money
no, it wasn't, it was SCOTUS decision O'Connor v. Donaldson
> when they closed down all the mental institutions.
Why on earth did we do this?
I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm.
I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death.
I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness. And reduce the tax on emergency services responding to calls.
I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a fiscal moderate and saying we shouldn't build subway to the suburbs. Being humanitarian would cost 1/10,000th of that.
>I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm
I'm reading this comment as if you had written:
"The TV show Hogan's Heroes makes being a prisoner of war sound like a jolly good time."
> Why on earth did we do this?
Much has been written about this, but from what little I know, they were abusive, and didn't do the job well. And were abused to keep sane people in.
I've heard that the advent of better drugs was also a factor. Prior to those drugs, there was no alternative other than commitment to mental facilities. The drugs gave the promise of a more manageable life - either by the patient or by their family.
What did we replace them with? Prisons.
About 20 years ago I saw a documentary about the use of prisons as a means to get mental health care. It explored the history that led to mental institutions getting shut down, and how prisons are treating the mentally ill. As crazy as it sounds, the prisons are doing a better job - even the inmates agree. Quite a few inmates said that the biggest problem they had was that they would be released from prison and not get access to the care they were receiving (including medications).
It wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture - they actually said this is, in one sense, an abuse of the prison system and that there needs to be a better way to treat them - but the consensus was "Definitely should not revert to the prior mental institutions!"
If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs.
We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:
1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects
2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention
3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)
4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public
It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are.
Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it.
I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated.
Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.
I also personally know the waste, stupidity, and cruelty of these situations. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the voters know what they want, and preventing these terrible outcomes is not worth the cost to them.
>> when they closed down all the mental institutions.
>Why on earth did we do this?
Supreme Court decision, O'Connor v. Donaldson.
Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from happening again.
Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't know was important, so the LLM can only wildly speculate.
I'd like to encourage you to resist the "what I did wrong" framing, because it's definitely not a given that you did anything wrong in any given circumstance. Sometimes neurotypical people are just completely unreasonable, and sometimes they will try to manipulate you (and each other).
The strange part to me is that neurodivergence is commonly explained in terms of inability to see things from another point of view (see the classical "what will X person say is in the box?" test). But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
I think the problem is that non-divergent people really cannot comprehend an inability to perceive non-verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is like breathing, or eating - it's something that just works for them; they don't have to think about it. It's scary and weird to them when they meet people that can't do it.
Then there are those of us for whom social situations are a 3-billion-line case/esac statement.
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Somehow, I managed to get married. My wife helped me understand what I was missing - it was like gaining eyesight after never having it or even understanding eyesight was a thing people had.
Yes, many people lack empathy. That is no excuse for you (or me!) to learn and use empathy.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time.
IME religion facilities this phenomenon. In-group members (esp men) get forgiveness and freedom from consequences (perhaps conditioned on saying magic words). Whilst out-groups get "forgiveness" with extra consequences.
Do you mean Christianity? Islam is full of consequences for members - it has a system of laws and punishments. It has forgiveness too but some crimes are unforgiveable even by God. Meanwhile, out-groups are more like enemies that sometimes should be killed if they don't cooperate.
Having some laws for bad behavior doesn’t mean Islam doesn’t let men shirk responsibility. Women are expected to cover themselves because of men being expected to have so little self control.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
Politics is about power fights: whose argument will convince the mass that in this case violence (laws -> state authority) is appropriate or not appropriate.
So even if the other person is able to comprehend other worldviews (which I would claim is actually often, though not always, the case), there exist very strong incentives to ignore these other world views in your actions when politics is involved.
Freakishly weirdly precise memory that doesn't work in other ways can be used to relayed relevant details to ChatGPT. I'll describe the weird face she made when I said that thing or the exact position of her body and the exact level of pressure with which she touched me on the arm and exactly where on my arm, for example.
As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault and they are being unreasonable and I actually didn't do anything wrong, they just don't like me. I mean yeah, that's also a thing.
Asking ChatGPT for that sort of advice seems like a horrific idea. Trying to learn interactions by written means can only lead to some very alien ideas.
Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them.
It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium.
I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a friend I deeply trusted, training my intuition based on their interactions, plus they trusted me enough to sometimes attempt to explain their intuitive reactions.
Where are these alien ideas are going to come from? Did aliens come to Earth and their complete works got smuggled into the training data for ChatGPT, and not the collected works of humanity? Every poem that's been digitized, every human psychology textbook, every self-help book?
My sympathies. And it’s sad to see you call it “what it is you did wrong”. Thus, also my apologies, for whenever I am on the wrong side of such interactions.
I'm trying to understand this better, possible to share any examples?
Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!"
Fuck people.
I have no idea why someone would get mad about getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift. It's boring, sure, but if you keep complaining about your old one, it seems pretty thoughtful.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
For anyone that like to do DIY, that's not a work tool, that's a play tool that is coincidentally a work tool to do work.