Blake Grimsley wages battle against bugs

Blake Grimsley grew up in Florida, which was a perfect training ground when he took a pest control job for extra money while attending college.

That was more than 23 years ago, and Grimsley hasn’t looked back. Today, Grimsley, 41, is service center manager at Arrow Exterminators’ residential service office on Warm Springs Road in Columbus. He leads a staff of 23 pest control professionals.

The career field is a solid one for technicians, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimating there are about 74,000 such workers across the nation. Median pay is just over $32,000 a year, with the agency rating the job outlook for the occupation at “little or no change,” which means it will remain steady through the year 2024.

Arrow Exterminators is among more than 50 pest-control businesses in the Columbus area, with some of them small independent operators.

This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. Did you know anything about pest control when you started way back when?

A. I had no idea. In the old days, and still to some degree today, it’s a lot of on-the-job training. Back then, you had different categories, which is your roaches, spiders, ants, and you had your termite side. Then you had your lawn and ornamental (bug) side. You also had another side that was fumigations. I started in termite and just worked my way through every department.

Q. You’re a manager now, but you started out simply as a guy going around the houses looking for termites?

A. Sure did. On an average day, you’re probably servicing anywhere from nine to 10 different customers, doing inspections on their house. You’re going inside the house, in the attics, underneath the house, all around the outside of the house, looking for signs of termite activity or anything that would lead up to some type of infestation. So you meet a lot of people, a lot of faces, and you’re always on the road.

Q. And you have to give some folks bad news?

A. You do, occasionally. But at day’s end, the name of the game is customer service and protecting that customer’s home and protecting their property. If it’s one that’s under policy, we’ve got a history with it already. ... Then, on the annual inspections, what we’re really doing is looking for any new problems that could arise.

Q. Compare that termite job to an average route technician who’s spraying for bugs.

A. You may see anywhere from 12 to 15 customers throughout the day. Theirs is a little more aimed at an integrated pest management. What they’re trying to do is eliminate the pests before they get into the home. … So that’s covering roaches, ants, spiders, silverfish, and other bugs.

Q. Atlanta-based Arrow bought out a local company about 25 years ago. That sounds like a good run in Columbus.

A. We’re a large, a family-owned business. I think each office — I’ve worked in a couple of them now — is like a family-run, independent type of operation. ... We’re hiring local. We’re hiring people that have been here their entire lives.

Q. Is it a competitive environment with lots of independent companies?

A. Pest control in general in the South is a competitive market, because it doesn’t take 23 or 24 people to do that. You can be a one-man operator or you can be two or three people.

Q. What are your duties as service center manager?

A. Day-to-day activity is overseeing all of our staff ... While our service manager does a lot of the service side, I still like to be a little hands on and know what they have going out for the day, what type of services they’re doing. …

Q. What has this summer bug season been like?

A. It’s been a pretty active year. The (mild) winter had a lot to do with it. We’ve had these rains in the afternoons now, so mosquito season is really picking up. We may see the mosquito season go a little longer, into the fall and maybe the first part of winter. Once you get lots of moisture and standing moisture, it tends to prolong that season. So you’re also going to see your ant pressure, which has been pretty rough this year. We hadn’t had a lot of rain. Ants are like any other insect. They’re hunting moisture, hunting food sources, so when you go through a little bit of a drought, they’re coming in.

Q. Has this been a bad termite year?

A. Termites in the South are always bad. There is no good year, and they don’t typically slow down. ...

Q. Any home is a target for termites?

A. Any home is susceptible. A lot of time what you’ll hear people say is it’s not if you get termites, it’s when you get termites. I’ve been in the business a long time, and I’ve had them in my house.

Q. How about mosquitoes? Zika is in the news now.

A. In my personal opinion, every few years you have another mosquito-borne illness that comes out. Zika, like many of the others, they’ve been around a long time. We haven’t had them here … The Georgia Pest Control Association, our company, and our training department all keep us well up to speed on where they are and what we’re faced with and how to eliminate it. The species of mosquito affects a lot of that. … But I think it’s like any of the others. Before that, you had chikungunya, encephalitis, West Nile. There’s always something evolving and a lot of your pests are like that … When Zika first started on the news, the phones rang off the hook with a lot of people asking questions and they were curious about it.

Q. How do you treat for mosquitoes in general?

A. We apply a product in resting areas, where the mosquitoes are going to land and they’ll be susceptible to it and pick up the product. So underneath your shrubbery, around the shrubs, underneath decks, and in the cooler, damper areas.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?

A. Customer service. They (staff) probably get tired of me talking about customer service, but that’s the No. 1 thing. I love meeting people and taking care of customers’ needs. That’s the number one thing I enjoy doing.

Q. Finally, what’s a good piece of advice for homeowners when it comes to pest threats? What can they do?

A. Maintenance. If there’s one thing we talk about with any customer, it’s going to be maintain your home, the cracks and crevices in your home, the screens. People, when fall gets here, love to open their windows. A lot of them haven’t looked at their screens the entire year. It only takes a little bit of a hole in there or a tear for any of those insects to get inside. So general maintenance, and clean out your gutters around your house. You would be surprised at how many insects live in a gutter on a house, from all of the moisture that’s up there. I’ve found earthworms up there, you name it. If you don’t clean them, you’ve probably got more pests coming out of that gutter than you do coming from the ground.

Q. So seal up the house?

A. Keep the cracks and crevices sealed up. And door casings, keep them repaired and painted and cleaned up. And keep debris away from the house.

This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 9:04 PM with the headline "Blake Grimsley wages battle against bugs."