Do any job long enough and you’re bound to see some really off the wall things somewhere down the line. I’ve been doing pest control for 27 years and hardly a day goes by where I don’t do a double take at something that gets me scratching my head or just drops my jaw and makes me say wow. A good portion of these ironies & oddities are negative in nature I’m sad to say. The irony of a God Fearing person who quotes scripture to me one day and skips out on the bill the next, a tongue lashing from a pregnant woman who says I’m killing her baby and then steps outside to smoke a cigarette, to the number of customers that leave windows and doors open to the world and become very upset when they find a bug inside. That is a part I’m not real fond of but since there seems to be little I can do about it, I think I’d rather spend my time on the not so negative for a change.
Not The Same Ol Same Ol
Pest control is not one of those mundane jobs where each day is like the last. Technicians and salesman are constantly put in situations where they see the most remarkable situations and just when you think you’ve seen it all -ta da- you’ve got another typical day waiting for you in this career. What amazes me the most is that the good ones, I’m talking about the best, use these ‘moments’ as opportunities to not only learn but also to teach and pass on to new generations of pest control operators a way of thinking – a way of finding answers that text books only hint at in a very sterile way. It may be years before the unseasoned see something similar, it might be next week but the fact that they can hear it from a pro like yourself might make all the difference in the world between a successful job or a treatment filled with doubt.
A Few I’ve Seen
A real odd situation I had once was on a full drill termite job on a home with a major infestation. It’s not unusual for liquid to come out of adjacent holes & cracks when you inject a slab but the front porch of this particular house threw me a bit. While treating I had liquid come out of the next hole and before I could stop it up I noticed worker termites were also coming out with the termiticide, thousands of them. In fact every hole I injected the liquid in brought up more. It was like I hit a main vein of termites and they piled up so much it looked like ‘rice’ had been spilled all over the porch. That day- I wasn’t too worried about the puddle.
Once on a termite inspection I was told I shouldn’t bother because the home had been recently treated for
Termite Tunnel Coming Out Of Treatment Hole
Twice in my career I’ve been hired to do pest control service for a person who actively worked for another pest control company. One was a tech who had a truck filled with all the same equipment and chemical I had. He never fussed about the price, was easy to schedule and almost always relented to my view point or information instead of his own. I asked him once why he didn’t do it himself but instead had me. He just shrugged and said he liked how I did it and knew if it were up to him he’d never spray. There’s a HUGE difference between a career pest control tech and one whose just doing a job.
