The Cockroach Theory

cockroach business

“Don't threat, just act – Threats are Ammunition for the Threatened.”

― Sino Melo

I remember when I was in college one summer at the University of Georgia I decided to take some time off from school, but decided to stay in Athens to work through the summer full time.

At the time I had a friend that was working for Sears Termite and Pest Control and I was able to land a job with them that particular summer. To be honest I didn't know a lot about pest control, but at that time they offered some very good training and even equipped me with a work truck that I could use to get around town to each appointment once I got through the training.

The job was challenging, but it was quite rewarding and I learned a lot about how to get rid of unwanted guests that would find their way into people’s homes. It was quite an experience and I encountered a few things that I’ll never forget including one of the most gruesome looking black widow spiders that I’ve ever seen. I pray I never encounter anything like that again because I’m not a fan of spiders at all, especially that particular alien monster I saw when working that job.

I remember it was a requirement for the technicians to meet at the office first thing in the morning to get the day’s schedule in hand along with making sure our trucks were properly equipped with everything that was needed to do the day’s work. The equipment and game plan for the day was always very important which is one of the best memories I have about that job.

However, one of the unique things about that job was that none of us technicians really knew what our daily schedule would look like until we actually showed up for the normal morning meeting. It was at this morning planning period where they would give us the day’s schedule for the appointments we would have to run.

Now I remember this one particular time when I arrived at the meeting the manager walked up to me and handed me the day's schedule and it only had two appointments listed on it. My initial thought was that I was going to have a light day, but the manager quickly called that into question as he put his finger on the later appointment that was listed and said something like You’re going to need the whole afternoon for this one. These people have a huge cockroach problem.

I didn’t think much about it and headed out to service my appointments. I quickly knocked out the first one on the schedule and then headed to the second appointment.

When I arrived at the second appointment I remember walking up to the house thinking that it probably wouldn’t be a bad job until I got inside.

The owner that came to the door seemed like a kind individual, but his personality was clearly a little odd. I’m not making any sort of judgment with that statement, but it was simply an objective observation.

After all, I typically like people who are a bit eccentric. However, when I got inside this guy’s house I realized that what I was dealing with was an excessive hoarder.

I mean when I walked in the front door I barely had enough room to take a step as the floor was completely covered with boxes, papers, and a ton of other miscellaneous stuff. This guy’s house was packed full of what I would consider to be garbage and I couldn’t even understand why he even bothered to call for any pest control.

I made my way to the kitchen and he yelled across the room that he had been seeing cockroaches. I remember sarcastically thinking to myself —No kidding.

After I had taken a moment to absorb the chaotic environment that I found myself in I started looking around and I would see the occasional cockroach on a counter, or running along the floor at the base of the kitchen cabinets.

When I was in training for pest control one of the things they always said was that if you happen to see a cockroach then this meant that there was a definite infestation of many more that were hiding in the walls and crevices of places that you wouldn’t be able to see at a casual glance.

I’ll just say that when it came to the hoarder’s home this wasn’t only true, but it was the truth on maximum overdrive. I knew that was the case the moment I walked inside the guy’s home given all of the junk that he had collected inside his house.

The reason I can say that is that in order for someone to have as much stuff as that guy had, that meant that there was a ton of movement involved with either him, or someone else, having to deliver all of the stuff he had into his house from somewhere outside of his house.

Therefore, it’s a guarantee that his house wasn’t only in a constant state of exposure from the outdoors due to the steady flow of foot traffic, but he obviously left his home exposed to the physical things that other people were actually bringing into his home.

In short, he basically managed to set up a consistent flow of a cockroach infestation that had apparently been going on for quite some time. This was obvious and the significant level of treatment that was needed to eradicate this individual’s cockroach problem confirmed the initial theory of what it meant if a single cockroach could be seen at a glance.

The Theory

When it comes to the world of business and finance, whenever a company ends up revealing some bad news to the public it’s usually a guarantee that there will be subsequent bad news to follow. This is usually the case along with the fallout of other negative events that end up impacting other companies and industries as a whole. If you look at the business industry this is actually known as the cockroach theory and it lines up directly with the hard truth that I was taught in training all the way back during that summer that I worked doing pest control.