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We have a contract with Terminix for general pest control. 
Read on for a little backstory and a bit of a rant.

We use our Terminix pest contract quite a bit to take care of ant problems in and around the house.  Our lot is next to an undeveloped lot at the moment, so we will continue to have a pest problem for the forseeable future.  Let me stress right from the start that I am happy with this contract.  The peace of mind is well worth the cost.  Anyway… on with the reason for the blog post.

Since we built a house, we decided that it would be a good idea to go ahead and get the house treated and enter into a contract for termite protection as well.  Michelle planned to be home all afternoon, and we were told that hey would be out between 12 and 2 to treat around the foundation of the house.  This seemed like a good plan!

From a customer service standpoint, if you say you are going to be somewhere between x and y, it is a good idea to show up at that time!  If you get an idea that there may be a delay, give the customer a call and explain the current situation and work out the schedule.  If you can’t handle that, then do like the cable  company and just tell the customer that you will be there between noon on Monday and midnight on Friday.  I mean… Really… Have you ever heard anyone complain that a company scheduled to come by the their house had given them too many informative calls about the scheduled visit? I know I haven’t!

So back to our particular case; Michelle gives up waiting around 4 pm and calls our local Terminix office.  They call Michelle back at 4:30 and tell her that the guy will show up within an hour.  Sometime around six, Michelle gets impatient again and calls to see what is taking so long.  The guy has to call her back a few minutes later and tells her that the guy is on his way in from Baytown and would show up sometime that night!  So, in hindsight, this is the point in the story that Michelle should have said no and rescheduled… I mean… this is getting a bit rediculous!  But that’s not what happened. 

The guy showed up in the twilight just before 8 pm.  I had no idea the amount of work involved for this job.   I really thought it was just inserting a hose into the ground at specified intervals… but noooooo… It involved this guy digging a 6 inch wide trench all the way around the foundation.  I believe he said that the chemical is poured into the trench directly, but I am not to sure.  I was working in the garage, so I was hot and not really paying much attention to him.  All I know is that he had a motorized pump on the tank in the back of his truck, and he had that thing on from 9 pm until at least 10:30 pm.  This piece of equipment would fit right in our neighborhood during the day… We are on a street with many houses still being built, so noise is not an unusual event.  But I was really frustrated that this guy was making this racket at night!  Our neighboors have 2 young children that were probably trying to sleep before nine.  I know that if I was in their position and my neighbor was making that kind of noise that late at night when my kids were trying to seep… I would be peeved about it.

Now, this is not the guy’s fault… He is just doing his job.  Actually, from what I could tell, he did a good job, and he was a very nice guy.  I blame this incompetence on the scheduling and dispatch system this local office has in place.  If you are scheduling work that will take 3 hours, then you should not be allowing scheduled events to start any later than say, 5:30 pm.