Bad Advice From The Home Garden Department Expert

So, fall has arrived again and with it comes many splendorous things, blue skies, changing colors of the leaves and of course—the golden luster of Oktoberfest beer!  But also, with these cooler days, there are some undesirable events such as creepy crawlers looking for winter harborage.  These skin-crawling creatures tend to come into your home knowing that the furnace will soon be warming the air inside your residence.  Recently, you have noticed one of the more dangerous of these invaders, a brown recluse spider crawling across your floor and are quickly motivated to find a solution to this danger.

So, in anticipation of more of these invasive devils making their way into your warm, cozy home, you go to your local, family-owned garden store for advice.  Once there, a friendly family member associate can give you well-informed recommendations on how to prevent the unwanted invasion of your pad.  Oh crap, I forgot, those places no longer exist, they have been replaced by corporate behemoths who could give a furry rats ass less (pardon the reference to rodents) about your problems or needs.  I guess you can do the internet tango to find the answer and buy online or opt for the more costly method of your friendly pest control guy who arrives at your house with their space-age backpack, doing their best “Ghost Buster” impersonation.

No, not you, you are a man/woman of the new millennium and you are going to handle this yourself no matter how many times you jump in a chair at the mere sight of one of these gnarly beasts.  So, it is off to one of the now-famous home improvement/hardware/garden center meccas that now rule our world.  Your choice of home gardening stores includes the one with orange colors and the one with blue colors.  For this adventure, you chose the one with blue colors dominating its sterile unattractive decor.  You make your way through the massive superstructure to the garden/pest department where there is an aisle that has a shelf loaded with cancer-causing, bug-killing chemicals just waiting to be sprayed on your living space.  Today, you are in luck there is an associate in the home garden department who is eager to impress you with their vast knowledge of all the chemical solutions on the shelves.

After explaining your situation, the “expert” quickly diagnoses the situation and without so much as a moment of pause, a very expensive spray is their recommendation.  However, your luck is getting even better, the costly solution comes complete with its own sprayer device and a glued-on instruction booklet—what could possibly go wrong—right?  The store expert goes on to explain how to apply the magically lethal solution to the perimeter of your house and garden thus eliminating those scary and potentially dangerous pests.  With the expert’s guarantee to solve your predicament you trundle off to swipe your magic payment device and hurry home to wreak havoc on these home invaders.

Recently, I discussed this situation and the store expert’s solution with a friend of mine who is a retired pest control company manager, after a brief chuckle he looked at me and said— “doesn’t surprise me”.  “Pesticides are very over-used and very profitable in the business of pest control”.  He also explained to me that the brown recluse spider cannot be easily killed with pesticides of any variety.  Because they do not have the mucous membrane that other insects and spiders have on their legs (feet), they do not absorb the poison into their bodies.  In fact, most pesticides can leave a trail of food in the form of insect carcasses for the recluses to munch on (brown recluse spiders are scavengers).  The only methods of stopping any pests from entering your home are A.–seal any access places that are in the foundation, garage or doors of your home or B.–place sticky traps near the access locations.  Since it is very difficult and sometimes costly to block all crevices in a home, especially in the attic where the recluse normally enters the home, the sticky traps are the most effective method.  Sticky traps are very affordable–$2-3 per box versus $20+ for the sprays.  This may be considered an opinion and some may disagree, but my research has confirmed the advice given.

Here is my point to all of this, again we have another glaring example of how these large corporate behemoths have no interest in helping the customer with the best affordable option.  Their goal is to simply sell the most expensive, less effective product that they possibly can.  Their mission, despite what would best to help a customer is to priority-sell the high-priced product of their corporate brethren vendors who could care less about how many people they harm with dangerous chemicals or other substances.  Having worked with large corporations (communications) I have experience with the mission of selling the “top product” even if it isn’t necessarily the right solution.

Let me also say that I don’t blame the department associate, that poor person is working 3 jobs just to buy food and pay rent.  They are only as good as the training that they receive and, in some cases, may receive spiffs or bonuses for selling a particular product over another.  Store associates are often pressured to sell products that are more profitable or from a preferred vendor ahead of others.  I guess it really is imperative to do your own diligence when shopping for a solution or product, especially in the age of digital information.  But it just seems so ridiculous to me that you go to a store and you can’t rely on people there to be knowledgeable enough to help you find a reasonable and affordable solution.

Sometimes people stop at stores after work or some other function and do not have the time to research something and have to rely on the expertise of the store personnel.  Just so you know, this was based on a true story, the names were changed to protect the guilty, I was the witness to the whole event.  And, as always this is just my opinion.

Talk To Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved