People Disclose The Most Patronizing Assumption They Received From Someone

“When I was in my 20’s, I worked for a small pest control company. It was a family-owned business comprised of the owner (an NYC fireman and mentor to me) and his brother-in-law. We were very close and it was my first full-time job.

We worked long hours with no breaks and took pride in our work. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was something built together. It fed our families and represented us as contributing members of society.

Due to our hard work and emphasis on customer service, we became extremely busy.

Soon, we acquired multiple corporate accounts that subsidized our residential accounts.

One such account was an auto parts manufacturing company. We serviced their offices, machine shops, and warehouses. The building location and imports that came in offered us no shortage of issues, but we always managed to handle them promptly and on our first visit.

Eventually, the executives began asking me to service their homes after they noticed how well we managed their business. I always went above and beyond for my customers, and these folks were no exception.

One day, while I was spraying the main office building, I walked into the VP’s office, after hours, to do their regular maintenance service.

To my surprise, the VP and the CFO were sitting at a desk and having a conversation. I knew them both well at this point as I had been servicing their homes for some time.

I stopped when I saw them and said, “Hey, what’s going on guys?

Working late tonight? You want me to come back and hit the office last?”

“Nah, it’s cool man. We’re just talking about how slow business is.”

“Oh, really? That sucks man, I’m sorry to hear that” as I’m doing my work around the perimeter of the room.

“Yea, well it is what it is I guess,” the VP replied.

“Well look, you guys have a solid product. I wouldn’t panic just yet. I’m sure things will turn around,” I said as I finished up the office. “Alright guys, you’re all set.

Have a good night.”

As I turned the corner, the VP said to his CFO in the nastiest and most sarcastic tone imaginable, “You know things are bad when the EXTERMINATOR is giving you advice!”

They had a big laugh over that one.

I paused, thought about what a tactful response would be, but decided it was better to walk away. It didn’t make sense to risk a big account over something like that, I thought. But then, as I was walking away, I heard him expound on his comment.

“Bro, if I ever get to the point where I gotta work as a freaking EXTERMINATOR, freaking kill me.”

That was enough for me.

I poked my head into his office, and in the same passive-aggressive sarcastic tone he used, I smiled and said, “Yeah, well, not all of our daddies give us companies.

Tee-hee.”

The words slapped him clean across the face. The CFO fell silent, the grin departing his face as the awkwardness drove his gaze to the floor.

“Oh, uh, hey…” the VP stammered, “Uh… I was uh, we were, umm, we were just joking around.”

“Ohhhh, ok…” I nodded slowly, casting an incredulous glance between the two men.

And with that, I left. Neither man said a word before I was out the door. Nobody brought it up again, and we remained in good standing with the company.

Listen, I don’t need to explain myself or defend how I made or make a living. I try to be humble with everything that I do. But forgive me if I tell you why I took such umbrage with what he said.

I came from nothing. My mother was a horrible boozer who worked as a bartender, and this conflict of interest made it impossible for her to hold a job. As such, we were constantly moving. I attended seven different elementary schools and two middle schools.

By the time I was in 7th grade, I had taken on the role of raising my younger sister and shielding her from witnessing as many of the horrors as possible. Often, I would “trick her” into going to play together in her room when I sensed trouble.

Then I would tell her I had to go outside, and I’d tell her not to open the door or come out of her room for any reason until I said ok. I would protect her from the boozers and addicts that used our apartments as a place to “party,” which frequently ended with myself in a physical altercation with these grown adults.

And if I’m being honest, I took pleasure in knowing that these lowlifes would spend the rest of their days knowing a fifteen-year-old kid had handed them their butt (and sometimes teeth) because they disrespected his home. I would tell my sister the noise was our wrestling.

I doubt if she believed that, but she listened. I would stay up all night on nights like this, making sure no one, including my mother, upset her. In the morning my mother would usually be passed out oftentimes, undressed on the floor or couch.

So I would cover her up or drag her into the bedroom before my sister got up and then I would tell my sister she was just sleeping.

By the time I got my sister off to school, I was often too tired and angry to bother with school myself.

So I just didn’t go. To give you an idea, in 9th grade, I averaged 3 absences per week. The criminal part about this was that I was a very intelligent child, but I lived in a world where school, college degrees, and careers just didn’t exist. I did just enough to get by and even that I only cared enough to do because I wanted to avoid prolonging the high school experience.

I thought I needed to graduate high school in order to get a job that would pay me enough for a small one-bedroom apartment. The prospect of a degree or a career were completely lost on me, let alone having a home or a family.

My friends at the time lived the same life as I did. In fact, our parents were drinking/dosing buddies. This shared experience gave us a bond unique to our friendship. We were each other’s support system. Looking back, I think the only time we could let our guards down and be KIDS was when we were together.

But being withdrawn from other cliques in our rough neighborhood made us targets for other kids, as well as some street gangs in our area. So we did what we thought was the only way to protect ourselves. We formed our own gang.

In all honesty, it was more of a fraternity. But in the eyes of the actual gangs, we were just a rival gang in their territories. Anytime we went out, there was always the prospect of violence. We couldn’t go out alone, we had to go everywhere in pairs or groups.

I thank God none of us got killed, and none of us ever killed anyone else.

This was about the time that a few of us started becoming entrenched in boxing and martial arts. What we thought initially would only help us in the streets turned out to be the door to a completely new path.

Through martial arts, we learned the value of hard work, self-respect, and empathy. I learned that I wasn’t the victim in these situations, but just a participant, because we ALL have contributing factors as to why we are who we are. I learned to not harbor hatred and anger because it will bring nothing positive to your life.

One day, social workers from the school showed up at our apartment. It was a bright sunny afternoon and my mother was wasted. They asked if they could speak to my mother alone, and I obliged. I left the apartment. I don’t recall where I went or what I did.

In fact, I don’t recall much of anything in the weeks that followed either, for that matter. Nor do I know exactly what was said at that meeting between my mother and the social workers. What I do remember is that soon after that meeting, my sister was sent to live four hours away in upstate NY, with her father, and I was sent to live with my father and his fiancee.

Being separated from my sister and my support system of friends was devastating. But I knew she was finally safe, and that was all that mattered.

Unfortunately, things didn’t get much better at home for me. My father, and my now-stepmother, were not prepared to have a sixteen-year-old kid dropped in their laps.

My stepmother never asked for it, and she never signed on for it. She imagined a nice quiet life with just her and my old man and then suddenly she had this man-child dumped on her. She wasn’t happy about it. And she let it be known.

My first night there, I woke up during the night, thirsty, and tried to sneak into the kitchen to get a drink. As I opened the refrigerator, she yelled from the next room, “What’re you eating now you fat so-and-so!?”

I didn’t know how to react to that.

My first instinct was to fight, to raise heck and stick up for myself. But I remembered my lessons in empathy. I reminded myself that I wasn’t the only one going through this transition. And I bit my tongue.

But this wasn’t a one-time occurrence.

This type of treatment became the norm. A constant norm. After a few months, it became too much to bear, so I ran away. I went from place to place sleeping on the floors of my friends’ bedrooms. Into my senior year, I was still sleeping on floors and was under pressure from my mother to just drop out of school and get a GED. After all, she said, that’s what SHE had done.

But I stuck it out, I graduated and I got a job. Got my first place at 18. I spent two years bouncing around, looking for steady work.

I worked as a bouncer, did private security, built a bulkhead, did construction, tree removal, delivered auto parts… whatever I could find to earn a paycheck.

Then one of my friends who I had lived with in high school asked me if I remembered the exterminator from the bagel store we worked at in school. I said of course. He told me the exterminator was having a hard time finding a reliable person and suggested I give him a call.

And so I did. I started working at the Pest Control company when I was only twenty-years-old. It was the greatest thing I’d ever done. I got to see on a day-to-day basis how a real family interacts with each other, and in time I became PART of that family.

My boss’s daughters became like nieces to me. My boss and his brother-in-law owned beautiful houses next door to one another but came and went as if they shared one home, which just so happened to have a driveway laid through the middle of it.

Half of the brother-in-law’s house was turned into a big beautiful apartment, which in NY could have gotten him around $2,000/month at that time. He rented it to me for $900. My boss put me through school to get licensed in multiple chemical application categories under the NYS DEC, as well as my license to be a home inspector.

Within two years, I was making considerably more money than what exterminators generally make.

The increased salary allowed me to rent a music studio with my best friend and business partner, Lou, and for us to buy all the equipment we needed to pursue our true passion, which was making music.

Through music, I got to tour cities around the east coast, as well as going as far north as Buffalo and even Canada! I never in a million years thought I would visit these places, let alone get paid to perform my own music there!

Once the band was up and running, my partner and I started a charity organization called The Music Speaks Foundation, where we organized concerts featuring local bands who would come together and help raise money for someone in need in their community.

The bands would get a cut of ticket sales, and the rest went to the cause. Most of what we did was geared towards children living with addiction and domestic violence, but we also worked with breast cancer fundraisers, women’s support organizations, and pediatric cancer fundraisers.

All of this was possible because of my job as a “lowly” exterminator. I owed everything in my life, up to that point, to the job that those two fools were now laughing at.

Never besmirch a man because he’s making a living.

Have some humility, and remember you don’t know how he got to where he is. No one job has more value than another, because at the end of the day, we’re all just squirrels trying to find a nut.”