Effective Immediately I Rylan Taylor am resigning from my position as Termite Technician at Service center 10 (Oldsmar) for Massey Services Inc.
I am sure that this would be enough to catch anyone's attention given how difficult it has been for us to keep staff at this particular service center over the last few months, However I wanted to shed some light on the reasons I will not be returning to work, some of the examples I will be presenting are fairly old but that does not make them any more justified in my opinion.
The first thing I want to point out is fairly recent as you can see from the picture above I put in a two weeks notice in April of 2022 I found out that I was Diabetic two days before what should have been my last day and I could not get the job I was pursuing as a result, so I stuck around beyond the date I was originally planning to leave.
This new life development meant that I was struggling to make dr. appointments coupled with the fact that I was at this time still dealing with the probate court system due to my uncle's death back in January. I was working the minimum (8-9 hours a day) that I could and still have a decent amount of time after work each day to get home and make the necessary steps to meet the associated deadlines. (which I missed multiple times). All of this stress was not made any easier by the service manager insisting that I work more every day without so much as coming to me and asking why I had been leaving “early”.
As you can see above, despite the fact that I came in at 7AM sharp every single day and 3PM is an 8 hour shift, it was not good enough for management. Without so much as
asking why this had become my new routine I was sent this message shortly after leaving the office one morning. I opted to not give the easy explanation that I could have given for this as a result I worked until 4pm and I struggled to get my personal matters settled as a result. However it became clear that Chad's idea of 4pm and the rest of the world are two different things.
If I got back to the office at 3:45 pm and spent 15 mins there doing my paperwork and left at 4pm on the dot I would be met with a passive aggressive circle on the top of my paperwork the very next morning because Chad did not want me clocking out and leaving the office at 4pm he wanted me clocking out of my last stop and leaving it no earlier than 4pm daily. I am an hourly employee. 7am-3pm is 8 hours. If I am working in Tampa and I clock out of my last stop at 4pm and it takes me 45 minutes to get back to the office. Even if I skip my afternoon paperwork that day I'm getting home at 5:15 pm and I cannot make any phone calls to a government facility or Drs. office of any kind, as they are all closed by the time I get home. All of this would have been shared with Chad had he only asked.
Instead he made a demand of me and gave me no opportunity to explain my personal issues that with, “I need you in the field until at least 4PM every day Thanks” It doesn’t take much to recognize a manipulation tactic when you are presented with one, that “Thanks” means nothing if not “you're doing it, don't argue” and he still acts shocked when his employees show him little to no respect in return.
While we are on the subject of manipulation I would like to draw attention to the above message from Dec. 6th 2021. This is comparatively “small potatoes” in my opinion but it doesn’t make it any less manipulative. Offer an opportunity to work around a holiday but instill fear in the employee so that the will do it rather than be told they are doing it without the freedom of choice. Manager? Fear-monger? Chad doesn’t seem to know the difference!
Let’s talk about the schedule and the work I do, I am a termite tech handling the residential side of termite work for SC 10. All of the new construction work is handled by another employee. I'm sure I don't need to tell you but my work load should consist of Primarily Bait Monitoring, residential bait installations, Total coverage upgrades, and termite pretreatments. There are other types of stops that pop up from time to time but are fairly rare by comparison to these types of stops.
Easily the most abundant type of work that I have every month is bait monitoring, I am given a production with anywhere between 180-240 bait monitors on it per month. That being said the last time I was able to clear an entire months worth of bait by myself with no “help” was in September of 2021 as our staffing issues began in October of that year and my work was constantly and consistently put on the back burner to fill a void in the pest routes we could not fill.
I am a hard worker ( I would argue one of the hardest in my office ) but here is where my ability to get things done starts to crumble. If you will see the below image (final text bubble) you will see evidence that they do not care how it gets done as long as it does.
This method might be good enough for some but I am not the type to allow myself to be represented by a poor work ethic, If I am given a task I am going to do it and do it right the first time so that It will be done and not require further work. So I simply ignored this message and did the job in question correctly, However the coming months of bait stops I would find myself presented with more pest work than bait. (I am not opposed to helping I am trained in pest)
The issue here is that every month that I did not get some of the bait done (several months in which I never had an opportunity to do any of the bait) at the end of the month they would just close the tickets and not actually try and get someone out to do the job, this would prompt several (not all) of the customers from the previous month to call and want there Sentricon stations checked retroactively the following month. which I would not be able to get to because management would prioritize pest work over my own. Fast forward a few months and my workload was so overwhelming that I am literally having panic attacks in the termite van because I could never hope to get to it all. (and literally being told that there is no reason to have a panic attack in the middle of said panic attack.
While we are on the subject of pest I believe it was the Regional Manager that implemented the rule that all customers were to receive a phone call that night before a service, There were several times where I had an open day and made a plan for bait monitors only to be told the morning of that I was working on pest that day. I cannot call anyone the night before if I am not told until that day what I am doing. bottom text. Sat, Jun, 25th 7:02 am
Even when I was eventually left to do my termite work and not shoehorned into a pest position unexpectedly, I was still rarely given enough time to get my work done as I would be triple booked in the same time slot and it would be literally impossible to get to the stops within their scheduled time frame.
The three stops here Susan, Mark, and Gertrude are all scheduled with an appointment window ending at noon on that day. In the example I am about to use Mark is dead center of the other two customers who are both 25 Minutes away in opposite directions. These were far from the only stops on my schedule that day and If I recall correctly Gertrude was the only one that I got to on time. I believe that our customers deserve better than that.
I began receiving phone calls asking when I would be at mark as early as 12:01 pm and despite the fact that I informed the office staff before leaving to go into the field that morning that I was going to be late to several stops the proceeded to point blame at me and insist repeatedly that I only had two 10-12 apps, when I sent the above picture to them to prove my point I was met with broken logic and told to “Be Happier”
I am not one to generally talk myself up but I am generally a very positive person so when I am hit with a claim that I am being “negative” despite giving the management and office staff every bit of information they could possibly need to turn all the negative thing into positive things, I literally don’t know how to react.
So now we are on the same page about what has been going on in my SC I have a few more things to share before I am done, The simple fact is that I have friends still employed by this company and I have enjoyed my time with Massey and I don’t want to burn that bridge if I can avoid it but I am confident that you will not find a single former employee of SC 10 that would be willing to go back to work for the management team there, I was hired in February of 2020 and in the time of my employment I have heard nearly every tech that has left weather it be transfer or just outright quit or event retirement that it has been because of management (primarily Chad due to his exceeding laziness)
Back on November 5th 2020 While I was still an apartment tech I was involved in a hit and run while working ( I am fine and was at the time too ) during this time my vehicle had to be repaired. While the repairs were under way I was driving Chad’s work vehicle for several days.
During this time I opted to use his GPS in his vehicle to save on phone battery as there was no iPhone charger in his vehicle while navigating the menus of the GPS a strangely labeled stop caught my eye.
Curiosity got the better of me and I did some digging and I shared my findings with the rest of the techs at SC 10
An important thing to note here is that this was not the first “Me time” Within two days of being hired I was informed and subsequently showed where his spot was, he was caught and changed his spot accordingly (I assume to the above) I do not know if he still does this or if it would be the same spot if so but I can confirm that it was him, If you look back to Oct of 2021 the We care email received a correspondence from someone complaining that a Massey vehicle was sitting for hours HOURS! at one spot. If the person who submitted that email provided an address it will undoubtedly be this location.
Again I am not hoping to burn any bridges with this company. I have genuinely enjoyed my time with this company but I know my worth and I am through being walked on for the sake of a team of managers that barely know what they are doing. Their laziness and unwillingness to properly communicate has created one of the most toxic environments I have ever had the misfortune to be employed at and as I have stated above almost all of the employees that have left have directly cited Chad as the reason. These practices cannot be allowed to continue. If you ever want to have a good, reliable team at SC 10 Chad will continue to destroy the morale of every employee that he crosses paths with and I hope I can save a few of them from going through what I did.
Thank you for your time!
Rylan Taylor
Former Termite Technician
08/05/2022