We have ants.
Well, in truth, we’ve always had ants, or at least ever since we moved in to the current iteration of Hearndom II. (My parents, for always and forever, shall reside at the original Hearndom.) They appeared our first summer in the new house, then the second spring, and now in the third winter, they have appeared again. (Hence our wintry discontent.) I find it particularly ominous that every year they seem to appear earlier (earlierly? What’s the adverb of choice in this situation) and earlier, so when the first stragglers appeared last week, I immediately placed a call to a local exterminator.
Last year when they popped up I contacted Orkin, and the day I call them again will be the day Beelzebub freezes his tongue to a frosty stalagmite. I went through the appointment scheduler on their website, and was told they’d appear between 10am and noon on such-and-such day. Apparently this confused the local office, who called my house and spoke to my wife while I wasn’t around. The salesgirl that called was very pushy about our need for a long-term plan; all I wanted was for somebody to show up and squirt the obvious trails with goo, and Sarah was unwilling to divert from the original plan without asking me. Apparently telling an Orkin representative that you’d prefer to just try one treatment (which was about $125; a plan involving a monthly visit for 6 months cost something on the order of $500) is stupidity of the same magnitude as freebasing asbestos. The woman on the phone with my wife was incredulous, and simply wouldn’t let it go. In the end, Sarah told her to just schedule us for one visit or forget the whole damn thing. So she did.
Except that I already HAD an appointment. Now I had two, and given the service so far, I fully expected to have the Orkin man appear twice in the same week and demand payment for each visit. So I called the local office and spoke to an elderly fellow who canceled one of the appointments and asked me if I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t prefer to set up a monthly maintenance plan. I hung up the phone.
Of course, the various Orkin representatives were right. Undoubtedly we should’ve gone with a long-term plan, since after a month or so, the ants reappeared, strong as ever. But I’ll be whipped with a garden hose before I’ll suck up my pride and call them back, if only because they probably put a note in a file that says “Unbelievably stupid, won’t order plan service” and I’m not dealing with smug pest control company phone operators.
So I called George Taylor and Son, and spoke to what I assume was the Son, Dan Taylor. He also indicated that what I probably needed to do was sign up for a maintenance plan, but he said there wasn’t really any point in discussing it until he came out and took a look at the problem. I liked him already.
This morning, he appeared, found a few ant trails in the basement, and detailed HIS company’s deal: $125 for this visit, and if I feel I want a longer term solution, I can cough up another $250 for a year’s plan, which gets me two scheduled visits, and if the critters pop up between visits, he’ll come out for free and hose ’em down with Prescription-Strength Super-Raid. Plus, I didn’t need to sign up for the plan right away, I could just call back if I wanted it, and the deal would still be available. Sold, said I. I wrote him a check, he sprayed God-knows-what on all my baseboards and on the trails in the basement, and we bade each other good day.
This is why I like local small businesses. Occasionally, you get a lemon, but most of the time you get a hardworking expert who’s not going to try and screw you, because he knows that word of mouth is his best advertising. With Orkin, sure, I’ll tell my friends and family that they suck, but as a national company, that’s not going to be put any serious dents in their profits, so they just won’t go the extra mile for you. The local guy knows that every happy customer often leads to 5 new customers, and every unhappy customer will tell everybody he knows, which in New Castle County is probably a lot of people. So he works hard, gives you a good deal, shows up when he says he will, is super-friendly, and explains everything carefully in terms that make sense.
(It goes without saying that I’ve never hired a contractor, so I have a sunny perspective on local business. I’m hoping to have my windows replaced in the next few years, which I’m told will end in misery, tragedy, and death. Although, maybe I shouldn’t listen contractor-related rumors from folks who have hired “Capulet and Montague, General Contracting.”)
