Did my carpet cleaner just tell me he was on drugs?

July 18, 2016 1:51 PM

Just had a carpet cleaner in to clean our carpets. As I was paying, he was having trouble getting his phone to read my card, due to my card being worn. But while he was doing it, he made a comment to the effect of "I only got about 6 amps in me today so I've kind of got the shakes." Any idea what that statement meant?
posted by jferg to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

Best answer: My guess is that the 'only' was sarcasm he was referring to AMP energy drink, meaning that he drank a bunch of caffeine and subsequently has the shakes.
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:53 PM on July 18, 2016 [22 favorites]

Best answer: Amp is an energy drink brand. Drinking 6 energy drinks would give me the shakes.

I'm probably the last person you'd ask about hip drug lingo but when I read that the first thing I thought was "oh, the energy drink?" So there's that.
posted by phunniemee at 1:54 PM on July 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

Best answer: Amp is a brand of energy drink, and it would make sense in that context. So maybe caffeine jitters?
posted by FakeFreyja at 1:54 PM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you. I try to steer clear of energy drinks, and live in an area where meth is a thing. But I'm inclined to believe energy drinks makes a lot more sense. Thanks, all!
posted by jferg at 1:55 PM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Well, energy drinks that aren't coffee, that is. :-)
posted by jferg at 1:56 PM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

If his behavior was professional overall and you are happy with the work he did, I would not worry about it. It could be a lot of things but probably nothing bad. Did his behavior otherwise seem erratic or make you uncomfortable? If not, I'd move on and, if you still feel unsettled in the long run, call a different company the next time you need carpet cleaning.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:57 PM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

My guess is that the 'only' was sarcasm

He probably meant "only" as in the six Amp energy drinks were the only thing he had consumed so far that day, with no food. That'd give anybody the jitters.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:31 PM on July 18, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yes, on the good-ass drug known as caffeine, heck yeah
posted by mikeh at 2:32 PM on July 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Because I am not hip to the cool kids' energy drinks, if I made a statement like that I would literally mean amps, as in amperes, as in a measure of current. As in, I am underpowered today.

Six amps is not very many amps. The average residential vacuum cleaner is 12 amps.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:58 PM on July 18, 2016 [11 favorites]

(And, weirdly, vacuum cleaners are often measured in amps. Seems like a thing a carpet cleaner would know about.)
posted by Lyn Never at 2:59 PM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

I totally thought it was referring to electricity, too. 6 amps would make a vacuum run pathetically, if it ran at all. Like a kid's toy that needs new batteries.
posted by SMPA at 3:19 PM on July 18, 2016

Response by poster: Yeah, electricity was where my brain went first, but it was such a weird and random number that I disregarded it.
posted by jferg at 3:48 PM on July 18, 2016

Six amps is not very many amps? One amp from a standard wall socket is MORE than enough to kill you! That was the other clue that he wasn't referring to electricity.

I know that's not really what you're asking, but I had to point that out. 6 amps is plenty more amps than any human being should be exposed to, since a nine volt battery can kill you.
posted by Strudel at 6:48 PM on July 18, 2016

My first thought would have been that he's just making a sort of weird, nonspecific comment about caffeine/coffee. Like "if I don't get my 10 cups a day, I just can't function," where 10 cups basically just means "a lot of coffee," and not any specific volume of coffee. It would never have occurred to me that it was a drug reference.
posted by decathecting at 9:24 PM on July 18, 2016