Pest Control Therapy Sessions: Unleashing the Exterminators with Guests Brad and Jack

G-Rex [00:00:00]:
Three, two, one. Welcome back to another episode of shit that goes on our heads. Today we have two very special guests. We have Jack and Brad from the podcast tales from the Crawl Space 20 welcome, Jack and Brad.

Brad [00:00:16]:
Hey, thanks for having us on, ladies.

Jack [00:00:19]:
Definitely, thank you. We've been really excited about being here.

Dirty Skittle [00:00:23]:
Dude, I'm so excited. I'm so pumped. Also drinking, so I'm a little.

Brad [00:00:46]:
I'm.

G-Rex [00:00:46]:
Drinking this week too. Last week was coffee and muse. Next today is a grapefruit Ratler from Perth Brewery.

Jack [00:00:53]:
It's two great tastes that taste great together.

Brad [00:00:57]:
Does it come in tartar control?

Jack [00:01:02]:
Yummy.

Dirty Skittle [00:01:04]:
Nice. So are you guys ready to just jump in? I think we're going to talk a little bit about your transition into where you are today and how you got there.

Jack [00:01:13]:
Oh, we're born ready. We've been born ready.

Dirty Skittle [00:01:16]:
Nice.

Brad [00:01:17]:
I wasn't born ready, but I was converted to readiness by Jack, among other things.

G-Rex [00:01:28]:
Oh my God.

Jack [00:01:29]:
That means bad influence. That means bad influence. That's what that means.

Dirty Skittle [00:01:33]:
G Rex, you need a potty pad.

G-Rex [00:01:35]:
I already have one down.

Dirty Skittle [00:01:37]:
We're good.

Jack [00:01:39]:
She prepared.

Dirty Skittle [00:01:40]:
Good. So who wants to kick it off, jack or Brad?

Brad [00:01:44]:
Well, I'll go ahead and start. We got here pretty much because of a Facebook group, more or less. My Facebook group that I created back in January of 2020 is called Pest Control Humor Depot, also known as PCHD because Pest Control Humor Depot is a damn mouthful. So it was started during COVID and it was a way to get people together in the industry to initially to just post memes funny shit that goes on in our heads. And it ended up evolving into a lot more. A few months into the group, Jack got a hold of me and said he was considering a podcast, starting a podcast, and wanted to know if it could be advertised, pimped, if you will, on the depot. And I was like, absolutely not a problem. The more the merrier. And I will let Jack take it from there.

Jack [00:02:52]:
During COVID as most of us pest guys were, we were essential workers. I have to throw this in there. One thing I loved about working during the COVID was that the speed limit everywhere was like 95 miles an hour because there was nobody on the roads except for us. But I just thought actually what started a podcast thing was I was in the grocery store buying toilet paper, which during COVID you know, was counting out to being Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. And I got out in the car and I said, I did a little video, I set my phone on the steering wheel and I did a little video and I said, look, this is Jack. Jack bought one pack of toilet paper. You have to realize that COVID is not a lower GI problem, it's an upper respiratory problem. Now if you're coughing so much that you shit yourself, you might need a couple of extra rolls, but stop grabbing 50 rolls at a fucking time. And when I posted that, a friend of mine goes, dude, you've got a voice to be on the radio or something? Like, nah, man. How am I going to get on the radio? Goes, dude, I have a podcast or something. So that started swimming around in my head. And I'm like, you know, there's two things I know about. One's being a smart ass, and the other one's pest control. And I don't want to do one of those techie things. I want to actually do something funny. And I started searching for funny pest control podcasts, and there were none at all. And there's still none except for us. And it just started from there. And I got all excited. Like after the first three episodes. I was like, dude, I got like 27 listens in one week. Holy god, I was so excited. And the first couple of episodes were train wrecks. Absolute train wrecks. Oh, they're horrible. It sounded like I was shouting through a moose's ass.

Brad [00:04:46]:
I want to stop jack there and put a preface in there that I was not involved in the podcast at the time. It was a train wreck.

Jack [00:04:54]:
No, the first show, I had three of us me, Nick, and Dave. And then Dave just disappeared after the first one. I guess he thought it was just as horrible as it actually sounded. And Nick and I continued the show for about a year. And then Nick got out of the business and my life took a turn for the shit. And so I kind of put it on hiatus. Now, we did have Brad in for one episode called the Inebriated Termite episode. And where we sat there and got like shit face drunk and talked about Termites. And then I was thinking about after. And we were talking about this last night on our show. Our episode last night is called the Feel Good Episode, about all the cool stuff that we've and I had lost. This is the only bummer thing I'm going to say. I lost both my parents last year, my dad in January, my mom in October. And Brad approached me about being my co host. And I'm like, you know, that might be something to keep me going because I'm kind of not feeling like doing anything. I had all the shades pulled down. I was like a hermit in my house. And we picked it up late last October. And because I couldn't get the logins to some of my old stuff, we had to start all over. I was able to download my old episodes and re upload them to a new host. But that's why it's Tales from the Crawl Space 2.0, because I had to be able to differentiate when I search online for the show. And it was me, Brad, and miraculously, Nick got back in the business. The same day that we decided to start the podcast back up. And Nick was with us for five or six of the episodes, and then his life took him in a different direction, which is cool, and I completely understand. I mean, we do this for fun. It's not like a paying gig. So if you can't make it, you can't make it. That's fine. And it's been me and Brad ever since, and we've been having a ball doing it. It's just been.

Dirty Skittle [00:06:54]:
Well, I mean, I love it. It's a very funny, hilarious show, so I encourage everybody to give it a listen. I also like your merch. I just noticed the shirt. I'm like, hey, we need to talk to you. After about our merch situation.

Jack [00:07:11]:
I actually had to switch merchandise providers because the first person that was doing it was my former brother in law. But his work life has him so busy that things were taking forever to get shipped, and I couldn't have that. So I went to I think it's Merchlink, and they give you a shop link that you can add to your website. So when you click Shop on our website, it goes straight to the Merch link page, and they'll actually develop samples or basic ideas. And if you like the way it is, you can just roll with it, but you have complete creative control over it, too.

Dirty Skittle [00:07:40]:
Nice.

G-Rex [00:07:41]:
There we go.

Jack [00:07:43]:
We got these. We got the Pest Control Humor Depot shirts with the big oval oval stickers you put on your car. We got those. These have the big huge emblem on the back of them. I think we got toboggan caps and hoodies and everything.

Dirty Skittle [00:07:57]:
Dang, we had hats.

Brad [00:07:58]:
Yeah, there's hats on the group. I've got a magnet that I sell to the members, so it's kind of like an identifier out in the wild. They could put it on their car, they could put it on their sprayer, they could put it on their bedbug, heater, whatever. So when they see that, they know that's a cheese bag right there. We don't keep any of the money we make off of this. As far as the magnets go, it's pretty much a zero profit thing. It's like I'm selling them at cost when you factor in shipping and whatnot. But every penny that we make off of any of the merchandise goes to a charity. Jack and I, from time to time on the Facebook group, we get people that are having needs. They've got a GoFundMe or whatnot. The money that Jack and I chip in to those GoFundMe campaigns, part of Know it's not all of it because the profits we make off of this stuff are shit, but we'll chip in our own money, and that money goes to those charities.

Dirty Skittle [00:09:05]:
Oh, yeah, I love that. That's really sweet.

Jack [00:09:08]:
And Brad and I would talk about starting a foundation of sorts to help guys that are getting into the pest control business guys and gals, rather, should I say, because there's increasingly more ladies in the business. I think it's awesome. We actually had a Women in Pest Control episode a couple of months ago, and we got a big one coming up this next week called Cheesebag Angels, kind of like Charlie's Angels. And we've got three very active and very awesome ladies on the Pest Control Humor Depot who are going to be our guests. And my son made a custom intro for it with the Charlie's Angels theme and to. We're thinking about starting a foundation of sorts, where it'll help these people who are serious about the business pay to take their certified entomologist certificates or degrees, like a fund to help them going through the process. Like the purdue University test to get their entomology certificate. Or.

Brad [00:10:14]:
It'S not a cheap I mean, it's definitely not medical school money, but it's still a good outlay out of the wallet when you want to study for that. So Jack and I are looking to have some sort of vetting process, and if somebody needs some help or somebody wants some help, all they got to do is ask us to help cover some of the expenses. And once this fund gets enough money in it, yeah, that's where it's going.

Dirty Skittle [00:10:40]:
That's wonderful. So can I ask, how did you guys get into pest control?

Jack [00:10:44]:
Oh, Brad, you've been doing longer than I have, so that's you first.

Brad [00:10:47]:
Okay, well, long story short is I was making a minimum wage job, and I was working a minimum wage job, and my daughter needed diapers, and the mother in law would come through every weekend when she came to visit with a pack of diapers. But that's only about a two day supply. Things were piling high with difficulty at the house. The job I had, I didn't really care for it. It was just something to pay the bills. But once the kid came around, I wasn't paying it anymore. Well, my sister in law husband's brother was a manager at a major pest control company, and they needed a position. Nothing I even considered going into as a career. But the money was attractive, so I applied. I got the job, I quit smoking pot long enough to pass the drug test, and boom, I was in. And I have not been out of it for 32 years. And it's one of those things that it was almost like an arranged marriage. It's like one that actually works out, because I was put into it, and then I fell in love with it later, and now I can't think of anything else I'd want to do as a career.

Dirty Skittle [00:12:03]:
Well, that's cool.

Brad [00:12:04]:
Not even astronaut. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I'm an ass.

Dirty Skittle [00:12:11]:
Yeah, halfway there.

Jack [00:12:16]:
Well, 27, 28 years ago now, I was working as a construction inspector. I was in charge of quality control for the terminal expansions for both National Airport and Dulles Airport, right around the DC area. But the problem is that there was a big influx of people from other countries, particularly people from India, with engineering degrees that did not translate to the qualifications to be an engineer in the United States. So they were getting into this geotechnical engineering construction inspection job, and the market took a dump, and people weren't getting paid what they were worth. So I started looking for more work because I wasn't able to pay the bills. And I saw an ad in the paper, and it didn't say what the job was. It just said, Must have construction experience. Please send in your resume. So I did, and I got a call from the company I started out with. We'll call them Schmerlick, as we like to butcher the name so we don't get sued.

Brad [00:13:23]:
Yeah, we're like the Mafia. No names, don't write anything down.

Jack [00:13:28]:
And Schmerlick called, and they were looking to hire a Termite guy. Now, when you do termite work, you have to understand how a house is built, the type of foundation, everything. You have to understand the way a house is built and the way it's put together to properly treat. And they started asking me questions like, what type of slab is this? What type of foundation is this? I'm just rattling off. And they're like, oh, you'd be great. So they hired me, and they put me with a 13 year experienced guy we called Tommy Termite. And that guy was a nut job. I loved working with him, and I learned from him, and I took to it like a frog does to water. And I loved it. It was great. It was never the same job. You didn't have anybody over your shoulder, so it didn't get boring. And it paid a lot better than the job I was doing. And so that's how I got into it. Just found an ad in the paper. Back when people actually used to look.

Dirty Skittle [00:14:30]:
At newspapers, I was thinking that when you said, I found the ad in the paper. I'm like, I remember that. You'd circle the ad, you'd call the number.

Jack [00:14:36]:
I'm old. Don't rub it in. I know I'm old.

Brad [00:14:39]:
And pest control is one of those industries that's kind of unique. How much money you want to make depends on how much you were willing to do. And the industry is not unionized. We don't have set wages or anything. I mean, we do have market comps and things like that, but most of the companies that are out there are ones where a person that goes out and actually does the service, the technician, he can sell stuff if he's willing to talk to the customers, if they need something different, add on. I mean, there's people making really good money in pest control.

Jack [00:15:22]:
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Dirty Skittle [00:15:24]:
So you guys aren't afraid when you see bugs in your house, then?

Brad [00:15:27]:
Oh, no, I'm pissed. I'm not afraid. I'm just like, how in the hell did you get in here?

Jack [00:15:35]:
But I'll tell you, you'll find out. With most tradesmen, though. But one of the first jobs I had a long time ago was installing carpet. And you'll find that most tradesmen, they do a fantastic job in other people's homes. Pristine looking carpets and stuff. But when they get home, their carpets look like shit because they're tired of doing it, because they've been doing it all day. So I guess it's like dating a hooker. You're not going to get laid because she's been doing it all day, right? But for the pests run around the house, I'm like, you're brave.

Brad [00:16:07]:
He picked the wrong fucking house.

Jack [00:16:09]:
But we don't really stress on it so much because we've been doing it all day, right?

Brad [00:16:13]:
I mean, we're the customers. We're going to locate the source. We're going to run this comprehensive report, and we're going to do all this. No, we're fucking smashing it. Spraying, spray where he was at. I'm back to watching Beverly Hills rerun.

Dirty Skittle [00:16:28]:
The alarm is sounding.

Brad [00:16:31]:
I smash it. And I go back to watching Beverly Hills reruns.

Jack [00:16:35]:
Now, we don't get scared much about anything like that. No. I had a story a while back. We had an episode called was it Tales in the Crawl Space. I had a house that I was at in West Virginia. I was in the crawl space, hurching around, and I felt something hit the back of my neck and start skittering down my back. It turns out it was a brown recluse with all of her babies on her back.

Dirty Skittle [00:17:01]:
No, far enough away from this mic right? Now.

Brad [00:17:07]:
This is the PTSD story of the century here.

Jack [00:17:10]:
And all of her babies came off of her back and went down the back of my shirt. Now, I don't know if it is with baby spiders like it is with baby snakes where they can't control how much venom they release. I don't know. But that's what I was thinking. I was worst case scenario in the whole fucking thing. So I slowly crawled out while trying not to soil myself. And I got outside of the crawl space, and it was winter. There was snow on the ground. It was snowing. So I'm out there stripping down in the snow very slowly, and laid back in the snow where all these spiders were. And it was so cold they couldn't move. And the homeowner comes around looking at me, and I'm like, half naked in the snow. And they're like, what are you doing? And I got up and I pointed down. I said brown. Recluse. Seeing a brown recluse doesn't scare me. Seeing a black wooden didn't scare me. But when you have a shitload of them down the back of your shirt, you get a little concerned.

Brad [00:18:10]:
I think about that every time I go into a fucking crawl space.

G-Rex [00:18:16]:
So that reminds me of dirty skittles. So last weekend, she sent me a picture of, like, her tomato plants and everything, right? And this girl is deathly afraid of spiders.

Dirty Skittle [00:18:27]:
Sure.

G-Rex [00:18:27]:
So on the text that she sends me, she sends me a picture, and it's a banana spider. And she's like, Time to burn down my garden. I'm like, Just get a hose and.

Jack [00:18:37]:
Spray it off, man. Let them stay. What they do for your garden, they are doing pest control for your garden. They'll deal with the tomato hornworms. They'll deal with the aphids, everything. They will keep your garden straight up. And they're gorgeous. And they put that zigzag in their web.

Dirty Skittle [00:18:54]:
Yeah, they do.

Jack [00:18:55]:
So things don't fly through their web. It's to keep other predators out of their web.

Dirty Skittle [00:19:00]:
And it's doing a good job because this tomato plant is thriving.

Jack [00:19:04]:
Oh, yeah, leave that spider there. That's my favorite. And the technical name is a Bruner's ARGIO.

Brad [00:19:10]:
Okay, dirty skittles. You and I are kindred spirits. My tomato plants right now, I love growing tomato plants. I'm in Indiana. I'm a hoosier. Growing tomatoes and playing eucharist is what we do. And I'll tell you what, my tomatoes this year are phenomenal. We've had a nice wet August and a decently wet July. So I've had some good yields. I appreciated if more of them would hurry up and fucking ripen. But I've already put up 25 jars of salsa oh, good. And twelve jars of pasta sauce, and it's fantastic.

Jack [00:19:45]:
I had some of last year's batch. It's fucking amazing.

Dirty Skittle [00:19:48]:
Oh, I might have to hit you up for recipes because I think we're like 25 tomatoes in on this one plant. And I'm like and I normally just eat them because I love tomatoes, but I'm going to make sauce so that's.

Brad [00:20:01]:
My there you go. If you can't make sauce right away and they're ripe, don't let them sit there and let the fruit flies eat them up on you. Freeze them. You can freeze them if you're going to make sauce with them. I mean, definitely you don't want to make BLT out of a thought out frozen tomato. That would just be way too disgusting and messy. That's how my beautiful bride and I do it is pop them in the freezer. When we get enough of a bat to make a batch, they come out with the fresh boom.

Dirty Skittle [00:20:35]:
Wonderful. So, okay, brown, reckless spiders, EW. And all other babies. What is the craziest shit you've seen.

Jack [00:20:45]:
Bug wise or otherwise? Because that's a very broad question with a lot of answers.

Brad [00:20:50]:
Yeah. Please don't ask him about his personal life.

Dirty Skittle [00:20:52]:
We don't have that kind of I'll narrow it down. While you've been in that industry doing a job or work still.

Jack [00:21:03]:
We have an episode called The Morbid episode where I walked into an apartment and there was a lady who had mother who had passed away there at the apartment, and she was a born again Christian. And she thought that she prayed over her mother's body enough that God would bring her back to life. So when I got in the apartment, the daughter was gone and I could smell something weird, but it didn't smell like rotting flesh that bad. And I was like, check the kitchen. I checked the spare bedroom. I checked the bathroom. Nothing. I got back to the main bedroom and I kind of push the door open and I see a body in the bed. I'm like, oh, sorry. I stepped back out and nobody answered me. And I'm like, what the hell? And I kind of look in again and say hello, and no movement. And with the light that was coming in the window, the shades were down and everything, but it was just enough light to see this gaunt face in the bed. And there was a dead lady in the bed that the daughter was like moisturizing her face and stuff in The.

Dirty Skittle [00:22:06]:
Silence of the Lambs is fucking happening in that holy shit. So what did you do? Did you have to call the police?

Jack [00:22:12]:
Well, I went to the office across the street and told them, and they called the police, but the rest of my day was shot. I had to sit there and answer questions and everything, but it was obvious that lady had been dead quite a while. And I wasn't any suspect or nothing, but they had to pick my brain for what I saw and everything. And the lady apparently got arrested for abuse of a corpse.

Dirty Skittle [00:22:34]:
Yeah, I would imagine afterward. What about all that moisturizer, though? That's a commercial.

Jack [00:22:42]:
What was the Avon? Are you missing your mom? I knew Avon.

Brad [00:22:52]:
For the face that lasts forever.

Dirty Skittle [00:22:54]:
Oh, shit.

Jack [00:22:55]:
But that's one of the craziest. I mean, I've had strippers offer to pay me other than cash for doing a job. Wow. I've had no at their apartment. At their apartment. I had a fireman. I had a fireman who thought I was attractive that decided to hold my ass as I was going up the attic.

Dirty Skittle [00:23:19]:
Step just giving you support is all.

Jack [00:23:20]:
He was what I told protection. I said, look, here's the deal. If I fall while you're touching me, I'm going to sue you. I said, but if I fall on my own, that's workers comp, so do yourself a favor and don't.

Dirty Skittle [00:23:34]:
Oh, good for you. Set the boundaries.

G-Rex [00:23:37]:
The bigger man.

Jack [00:23:40]:
It's a cute butt, I got to admit that. But damn, keep your hands off of it.

Brad [00:23:44]:
It has its charms, Jack.

Jack [00:23:45]:
It does. It really does.

Dirty Skittle [00:23:47]:
What about you, Brad?

Brad [00:23:49]:
Oh, me? I would say the most bizarre thing that sticks with me the longest is when I was working at my first company, I was doing a house. No one was there. We had been there before. Mice were the issue. I'm walking into the door and it's like a split level, and they had steps that are going up to the second level right there, to the right of the door, and I heard a squeaking noise. And I couldn't figure out I was like, what's that? I thought it might have been the floor as I was walking across it, because I'm fat, I can make cast iron squeak. But I kept hearing it. And so instead of I always start in the kitchen, instead, I had to go upstairs to investigate. About almost all the way up to the steps, there was a glue trap about the size of three playing cards, end to end. A mouse was caught on it. This mouse was dead, but this mouse was giving birth, and the mouse was these baby mice were coming out of the mother and going right into the glue. And that was something that this was 20 some years ago, and sometimes I still dream about that. Another one was working on 911. It doesn't have anything gross or sticky or icky or anything like that, but it was just the bizarre atmosphere of everything was something I'll never forget. Indianapolis. It was like the twelveTH largest city in the country. It was a ghost town, and businesses were very reluctant to let us in. The ethnic establishments were hanging american flags in their front window, thinking that there'd be a retribution attack or something. One of the major hospitals in the city was on my route for that day. I had to go through so much clearance, you think they were refining plutonium in there. And the skies were just silent. And that just put a whole new dimension of bizarre on things that I was not accustomed to at the time. Because we live in america, it's noisy, it's busy, it's free, and you can go into places you could do things and stuff like that. All that ended on 911. And that was probably the most surreal few days, because it was like four days before I even saw a plane fly overhead my house. And it was quiet, and everybody was nice, polite, but scared. Yeah, I would say that was probably the creepiest thing, that and the mice.

Dirty Skittle [00:27:03]:
Wow. Yeah, I remember. I think everybody has like a where were you at during 911 story?

Jack [00:27:09]:
Oh, yeah.

Dirty Skittle [00:27:10]:
And I was senior year of college, and I was volunteering at a veteran's nursing home, and we were in the kitchen getting breakfast ready, and we hear it on the radio, and everybody stops because it's confusing, like, what's going on? And we all went into the main room that they had, and there was a TV, and we were watching the news live as a second plane hit, and it was just surrounded by veterans. And I just remember being like, goosebumps covered. I'm like, this is crazy. Just to see this older generation looking at the TV, like, fuck it, give us our guns. Like, we have to go protect the country. And I'm like, Holy shit. It was crazy.

Brad [00:27:52]:
That's what happened. That morning, after all that happened, we were still sent out to work. One of the technicians come back in. He was just in his truck getting ready to go off. He turned on the radio and heard about then this was when the first plane hit the towers. He came in and told us about it, and we were all like, oh, it was a small craft. It was an accident. Somebody got off course, slammed into the building. There's going to be some mess on the ground. Everything's cool, but it's like, we want to see this. So we had one of those little AV Nerd carts with the big that was before flat screens and everything. We roll it into the service manager's office. About five or six of us, and the service manager and the branch manager were in there watching it. And we're looking at it, and as we got our eyes glued to the set, and then that second plane hits, and we were just all like, what the fuck? We just kind of looked at each other with our mouths open, and I was like, we're being attacked. And they're like, Holy shit. Well, the manager was like, well, all right, let's get to work. I was like, fuck you. Let's get to work. I was like, I want to go home, make sure my house is going to be okay. My daughter's at school. I want to know what the fuck's going on. But no. Let's get to work.

Dirty Skittle [00:29:05]:
Yeah. And I guess that's something with essential workers, right? We don't think about that stuff. I would have never thought about it, but yeah. That's crazy.

Jack [00:29:12]:
Well, I know. For me, that was the day of my grandfather's funeral, and I had to go from Baltimore down to Alexandria, Virginia, which you go right past DC and across Potomac River. And as you go down 295, you pass right by the National Security Agency. And that bridge was lined with people with machine guns.

Dirty Skittle [00:29:30]:
Oh, shit.

Jack [00:29:31]:
When we got to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, crossing the Potomac from Maryland to Virginia, the smoke from the Pentagon was following the river and was blowing directly across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. So I ended up driving through that smoke from the Pentagon.

Dirty Skittle [00:29:45]:
Wow.

Jack [00:29:46]:
To get to the funeral, and no cars on the road, no planes in the sky. It didn't even seem like the birds were just I always said that the world stopped the day I buried my grandfather, and it literally did stop. It came to a screeching home.

Dirty Skittle [00:30:00]:
That's wild.

G-Rex [00:30:01]:
Yeah. For me, I was working, and they had the TVs on, and they sent us all home. We both had family members that were traveling that day. Couldn't get a hold of anybody. It was horrifying.

Jack [00:30:18]:
Oh, yeah, man.

Brad [00:30:20]:
We all changed that day.

Dirty Skittle [00:30:22]:
I know we did, right? Yeah. I'll never forget it. I keep thinking, like, one day my son will come home. And say, mom, tell me about 911. And then be like, let me tell you all about it. That's crazy.

Brad [00:30:34]:
Yeah.

Dirty Skittle [00:30:35]:
Okay, cool. So you all started in the pest control industry, passionate about it, saw some crazy shit, almost got attacked by spiders.

Brad [00:30:46]:
Jesus.

Dirty Skittle [00:30:51]:
Yeah.

G-Rex [00:30:51]:
You know how you all feel about spiders? Well, that's how I feel about snakes. All right.

Brad [00:30:55]:
No, same here. Same here.

Dirty Skittle [00:30:58]:
When you said something was slithering down your back, I was like, oh, God, please tell me it's not a snake. But then you said something worse. Spider and all of its babies.

Brad [00:31:07]:
30 years in the business, I will not mess with a snake.

Dirty Skittle [00:31:10]:
No.

Jack [00:31:13]:
Yeah, I own a snake.

Brad [00:31:15]:
Yes, you do.

G-Rex [00:31:17]:
You can keep that snake.

Brad [00:31:20]:
And this isn't some sort of innuendo. He actually owns a reptile type snake.

Jack [00:31:28]:
In this business. I'm sure Brad will agree. We've been attacked by all kinds of stuff. I mean, from hornets to I've had roaches cloud up on the ceiling above me and drop off onto me when.

Brad [00:31:40]:
There'S so many customers.

Jack [00:31:43]:
Oh, yeah, customers attack you. I had a gigantic DC rat jump out of a baiter and try to attack me, and I had to stomp on his head. Oh, yeah. We get attacked by all kinds of stuff, and that's just kind of part of the job. I mean, we don't even really think about it. It's like, oh, yeah, that happened. Whatever.

G-Rex [00:32:01]:
But for that kind of stuff, like, how do you guys take care of your mental health? Because doesn't it fuck with your head a little bit?

Jack [00:32:08]:
Oh, you can't be in this business without being a few croutons short of a sadly, that's right.

Brad [00:32:13]:
Absolutely. But you know what? We all have our coping mechanisms. A lot of us have side things, hobbies or whatnot, to kind of get our minds off of it. I look at pest control Humor Depot on Facebook. Everybody is showing us what they do to unwind, be it some sort of artistic hobby. One of our members, Candice, is an incredibly talented does. She does some amazing artwork. She's got some of rock idols like Robert Plant, david Gilmore from Pink Floyd and things like that, where she's done paintings of them and they are so damn good. And then others, sometimes on the weekends, we just get a picture of a table with a glass of whiskey, a cigar, a joint, whatever sitting there. One thing about pest control technicians and employees that I've noticed is that we do know how to unwind. It may not be the healthiest way to do it in some instances, but we get the job done.

Dirty Skittle [00:33:25]:
Yeah. So you're not doing, like, yoga and having an ice cold water.

Brad [00:33:31]:
I would like to say that our jobs really aren't the things that send us into therapy, but we found a way around it, because at the end of the day, it's a job. Work sucks. People say they want to work, they want something to do. But if you didn't actually have to work and to make the money, you'd find something to do and you're not good at this, you're not going to be in here a lot for a long time if you don't love it anyway. So it makes that easier to cope. But the other stuff is just that everyday kind of shit that everybody else on the planet deals with and we have our ways to deal with it.

Dirty Skittle [00:34:13]:
Yeah.

G-Rex [00:34:13]:
Do you think that your podcast helps you guys too?

Brad [00:34:16]:
Immensely?

G-Rex [00:34:17]:
Like it's your right immensely.

Jack [00:34:20]:
Oh for both of us, yeah, for sure. It's our therapy and we think that's kind of why the podcast is really taking hold in the pest control community is because I think for them it's therapy as well. I mean, I know Brad and I both have gotten messages recently, people going, man, your show is what helps me get through the day. Matter of fact, last night we read on the Feel Good show, we read a submission from one of our listeners that they were talking about getting really burnout on pest control and burnout working so hard. But between the depot and all the awesome cheesebags on the depot and on the podcast she was like, that really helps me get through because I know that I'm not alone in this. I know that crap's going to was it's. I love reading those know. I'm sure Brad gets tons of those messages. I know I get a bunch of.

Brad [00:35:11]:
Know and at the risk of sounding conceded, jack and I do feed off of that. It really helps when we know that what we're doing makes a difference in somebody else's life. It gives us good.

Jack [00:35:27]:
For sure.

Brad [00:35:30]:
And it makes us want to keep doing it.

G-Rex [00:35:33]:
And what I love about you guys is with dirty skills tonight you guys are authentic, right? You speak your mind, you don't sugarcoat it. We get the same messages for us when we get our reviews, we both get a little teary so you try not to read them too often. But when we have people that are fan girling over us just for doing this, I mean it makes us both feel good, right?

Brad [00:35:57]:
Oh yeah.

G-Rex [00:35:58]:
Our mission is really coming to fruition.

Jack [00:36:02]:
Now. You guys have been a juggernaut of positivity listening to your show. I can only imagine what kind of security and safety people feel when they listen to your show about the different aspects of life. Like when you had your one guest who was dealing with a cancer diagnosis and my condolences by the way, but that listened to that episode, I would have been a basket case. And she just kept powering through and getting on with life and I've never heard so much strength come from one person in my life and I thought that was absolutely.

Dirty Skittle [00:36:47]:
And it's it's almost like a little bit of that with every episode that we record. I never expected to be inspired each time and bookie was for sure like life changing and everything. It's just you get attached.

Jack [00:37:04]:
My other favorite episode was when a sandwich is not a sandwich. Yes, her stories working in the kitchen. And then I think they said that they moved where the kitchen was and they completely threw her off. But that was awesome. I love that one because there was a lot of undertones about a bigger picture in life, but it was just her working in the kitchen and stuff. But I tell you, kitchen culture is a big cross section of life if you think about it. Yeah, that was a great episode. I love that one.

Dirty Skittle [00:37:38]:
Yeah, that's still one of my favorites because like I had mentioned before, I'm like we started this episode and I thought we were just going to exchange funny and rude and dirty kitchen stories, but it was so much more than that.

Jack [00:37:50]:
Oh, yeah, it really was.

Dirty Skittle [00:37:52]:
I loved it. So are you both still in the industry? Are you retired? Where are you at in life now?

Brad [00:37:59]:
I'm still in the industry. In fact, I just changed companies in June. I was a branch manager at the company before, and I've been in management and pest control for a little over 20 years. I got to the point where I didn't want to be the manager anymore. I didn't want to eat the shit that I was having to eat. I didn't want to eat up any more stomach lining than I already have. I didn't want to be responsible for anybody but myself and a couple of other things that happened at this particular company that just really made me sour because I knew it was the right thing to do for the company, but the wrong thing to do for humanity. And it just got to the point where I couldn't take that anymore. My daughter is grown and out of the house. My house is paid off. My wife is semi retired. And I got to the point where I figured I had one more adventure left in me before I retired. So a good budy of mine who I used to work with at we'll call it the Big Green Tea, we worked there together. He decided to open his own business. I decided to stay there and grapple my way up the corporate ladder. I got so far, decided I didn't want it anymore. He and I were talking he was talking about some staffing issues he had, and I said, hey, I know somebody. I said, he's fat, he's old, and he hates working. Saturday. He goes, oh, really? Well, send him to me. I said, I just did. It's me. He goes, well, if you're serious about that, let's get together and talk. So that Sunday we got together over a steak and Suburban and hammered out a deal. And I'm working for him now and I could not be happier. I'm once again doing what I fell in love with in the industry in the first place, which was killing bugs and taking care of people. And I couldn't be happier. My phone is so much quieter now. My inbox is so much lighter now. And my heart I enjoy having my heart in my chest once again.

Dirty Skittle [00:40:18]:
I love that. What about you, Jack?

Jack [00:40:20]:
Well, I'm retired now. Not because I wanted to, but I'm enjoying it. But a couple years ago, I kind of followed the path that Brad did and I got out of management and I became a commercial tech, just doing, like, restaurant kitchens and stuff like that. And I loved that so much more. I only had to worry about myself. It was great. On the way home from work one day, I was in my little Mitsubishi Mirage four door and Ford F 550. I didn't know they made 550s with a landscape trailer with 20 turn mowers on the back of it. So we had that added momentum rear end of me doing 45 and put the trunk in the backseat of the car.

Dirty Skittle [00:41:04]:
Wow.

Jack [00:41:04]:
I had to have surgery on my shoulder, and they had to remove one of my upper bicep tendons on my right arm. Now, before I had the MRI, and I knew that that was destroyed, I tried going back to work and I'd get 15 minutes into the day and try to move a proofer around in a commercial kitchen. And my arm felt like somebody set it on fire. Wow. I'd stand there in tears. It hurt so bad. Turned out that that one tendon was completely destroyed and my rotator cuff was torn almost in half.

Dirty Skittle [00:41:38]:
Whoa.

Jack [00:41:39]:
So I ended up having to have surgery on my arm for that. And I can't do what I used to be able to do anymore. So I was able to retire with the settlement I got from that accident because I was laid up. I don't know if you've ever had rotator cuff surgery before, but you have to sleep sitting up for three months. Oh, man, that's difficult. And on top of that, you got to do it while you're taking pain meds. If you can handle the pain meds and that's bad, sleep anyways. And then you're trying to do it sitting up. So it was miserable. The recovery from shoulder surgery, everything that happens above your waist goes through the muscles that attach to your shoulder. So if you're pushing a fart out, if you reach with the other arm for something, you feel it. It's miserable. So, yeah, I haven't been able to I can't do what I used to. So I'm retired now, and I'm enjoying my retirement. It allows me to be the Pimp for the podcast for all our social media and stuff. Yeah, I've got other little things that keep me busy. I'm building a house on top of a mountain, and I'm spending a lot more time with my son. My son lives near hershey. I'm down in virginia. Me and his mom are best friends. We're absolute best friends. And I guess having a child with special needs, you learn to put aside the petty stuff and worry about what's important. And me and her fantastic friends and I spent a lot of time with him, and I took brad up the mountain when he came out to hang out with me, took him up to see the house and the view from the top of the great north mountain range.

Brad [00:43:24]:
Ladies, it was beautiful. I mean, I have never seen such a perfect place for a home, especially when you're an introvert like jack. He is isolated, but, no, his house overlooks everything almost in the state, and it is just an incredible place. I could never get my wife to go up there because of the drive. You're driving up a mountain. But if I was in jack's shoes, I couldn't have picked a better place to build a home, either. And I was really happy that I got a chance to see it. I hope to see it once it's all done and he's in there, and it's got it all farted up. Oh, by the way, jack, I haven't had to push a fart out in years. You get to be my age if they just kind of fall out.

Jack [00:44:22]:
Yeah. Every time I bend over to tie my shoes, all that. But if I sneeze, I fart, all that stuff.

Brad [00:44:31]:
You get the title of crop duster when you get to be about 57.

Jack [00:44:34]:
Oh, no, I do that intentionally. I'll go to walmart and lay a trail right down the aisle and then stand. I got to say, this is my favorite story of all time. I was in a mall springfield mall, and I was waiting for my friend who was down the little side hallway in the bathroom, and I had a nice, hot, quiet one, and I let it go, and I kind of backed out of it. Now, this mother had her child on a leash walking, and they walked through it, and the mother grabbed the child and put his ass to her nose thinking he shit himself.

Dirty Skittle [00:45:09]:
And.

Jack [00:45:11]:
I tried not to give away that it was me. So I'm standing there with gritting my teeth, with tears rolling out of my eyes, laughing, trying to keep my laugh inside. But I was so proud of that. That was one of the few moments that I'll look back on on my deathbed and go, yeah.

Brad [00:45:28]:
Brahmo, jack, well done. The last episode you ladies had up was about women and breaking barriers and stuff, and now you got one on men breaking wind. You bookended it perfectly.

Jack [00:45:49]:
We get because we love be gifted.

Dirty Skittle [00:46:01]:
Just make sure you're talking to someone.