Mar 27, 2012 – Bringing In The Heat
QUESTION:
What are your thoughts regarding pest control technicians reporting customers to public health officials? I had a situation where I was asked to follow up for another technician dealing with a rat infestation at a residential account, and he informed me that he reported her to the public health dept for the condition of the house - supposedly rat hair, rat feces, rubbish and odors. When I inspected the house the only odor I could detect was from her old dirty dog, which basically lived in the first floor of the house, and upstairs seems perfectly normal to me with no odors and relatively clean. I informed his supervisor of my findings and indicated that I didn't believe that she should have been reported to public health, but that we should just eliminate the rats from her home and do the job she paid us to do. Also, the supervisor was the one that contacted the Health Department without even inspecting the residence himself and he became extremely defensive, questioning my judgement. Your thoughts please.
ANSWER:
Whenever I tread on controversial ground I tend to tiptoe a lot, but this is a very good question that relates to more than just this incident. If you have commercial customers, especially a restaurant that serves food to the general public, and you perceive a serious health situation that the management of that restaurant refuses to address, should you notify the public health authorities about it? This puts you in a ticklish situation. If you ignore an obvious public health problem perhaps you are guilty as well of putting people at risk when they unwittingly eat the food there. If you bring in the authorities you risk angering that customer and losing him, since he is likely to connect the dots on what has occurred. I think you would work as hard as possible with the customer first, to get the problems corrected and get him to cooperate and willingly bring his facility into proper health standards, but if that simply is not going to happen then how badly do you need to keep that account? If someone gets ill because of the poor sanitation there, linked also to the presence of pests, YOU will be brought into the mess because you will be blamed for not controlling the pest problem, and when the media publicizes this event they could well mention your company name in a negative way. Perhaps when all hope is lost bringing in public health inspectors is the right thing to do.
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What are your thoughts regarding pest control technicians reporting customers to public health officials? I had a situation where I was asked to follow up for another technician dealing with a rat infestation at a residential account, and he informed me that he reported her to the public health dept for the condition of the house - supposedly rat hair, rat feces, rubbish and odors. When I inspected the house the only odor I could detect was from her old dirty dog, which basically lived in the first floor of the house, and upstairs seems perfectly normal to me with no odors and relatively clean. I informed his supervisor of my findings and indicated that I didn't believe that she should have been reported to public health, but that we should just eliminate the rats from her home and do the job she paid us to do. Also, the supervisor was the one that contacted the Health Department without even inspecting the residence himself and he became extremely defensive, questioning my judgement. Your thoughts please.
ANSWER:
Whenever I tread on controversial ground I tend to tiptoe a lot, but this is a very good question that relates to more than just this incident. If you have commercial customers, especially a restaurant that serves food to the general public, and you perceive a serious health situation that the management of that restaurant refuses to address, should you notify the public health authorities about it? This puts you in a ticklish situation. If you ignore an obvious public health problem perhaps you are guilty as well of putting people at risk when they unwittingly eat the food there. If you bring in the authorities you risk angering that customer and losing him, since he is likely to connect the dots on what has occurred. I think you would work as hard as possible with the customer first, to get the problems corrected and get him to cooperate and willingly bring his facility into proper health standards, but if that simply is not going to happen then how badly do you need to keep that account? If someone gets ill because of the poor sanitation there, linked also to the presence of pests, YOU will be brought into the mess because you will be blamed for not controlling the pest problem, and when the media publicizes this event they could well mention your company name in a negative way. Perhaps when all hope is lost bringing in public health inspectors is the right thing to do.
Without knowing any background on this home you are dealing with I can't pontificate too much. Is this just a private home with the owner the resident, or is it a rental? How long has the other pest control company been dealing with what they felt was a deplorable situation? Who asked you to do this follow up on this home, thus bringing in a second company? I am making the assumption that you and the other technician are with separate companies? On the face of your description it sounds to me like the first technician/supervisor may have jumped the gun. There is no law that says you have to be clean and neat, and what one person thinks of as cozy another may think of as pigsty. If this house has a rat problem then obviously there would be rodent hair, feces, and urine and the associated odors, and to be honest, all of that is exactly why we are called out to the home, and all of that is a situation that WE have the ability to correct. Part of the process of rodent management is to point out to the customer these unsanitary conditions and to offer to properly remove the feces and to sanitize the surfaces that are contaminated. If it seems to be beyond the scope of what we can do then recommending to the customer that a cleaning company be brought in is appropriate as well.
It may be that the other company had been dealing with this situation for a long time, had gotten no cooperation or seen any improvement, and truly was concerned for the health of this resident. The only recourse they would have might be to try to get a public health inspector to see the place and add some authority to their desire to see it improved. Perhaps they may even have believed that with Public Health backing there might be public funds available to get the work done. I agree that before making a fairly desperate move like contacting public health that supervisor might have taken the time to see the situation personally to be certain that public health was needed, but he probably should have remained professional with you in your discussions with him.
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