pest control technician

outside sales representative

residential sales

home inspector

sales representative

Orkin

The good :
Company Truck
You get to see some cool places
Some of the customers are cool

The Bad: 
You don’t get paid drive time, and you’ll be doing a lot of driving, sometimes 2 hours away from your house. Again, you don’t get paid drive time. 

You have to log on to a phone app when you start your company vehicle. It’s called Mentor,  It keeps track of everything your vehicle does and it also gets you in trouble for things you don’t do. They refuse to fix it, but they want you to do it anyway. If you step on the brakes to hard, you get in trouble, back up too many times, use your phone when driving, if someone texts your work phone while driving it hits you for that also. It’s very unnecessary and adds extra stress to your day. The app also comes with a ton of random videos you have to watch and keep up on, it’s all mandatory and you will be required to watch the videos and take all tests at the end, even on weekends and when you’ve worked all day. You also have videos you have to watch on another app called UKG pro, which is the same app you clock in and out of. They have training modules on there as well, all mandatory, all done on your own time, and some of them are 45 minutes to an hour long. 

Absolutely zero communication. 

I didn’t get training when I started. I got a few ride alongs with a few techs, but I never got a shred of training through Orkin. Supposedly they have an “award winning training program, and I heard it is actually pretty good, when they decide to use it. They tossed me keys to a truck with no brakes and said “fake it till you make it.” Literally, that was my training. I never learned anything about pest control through Orkin, it was all through calling technicians when I needed help and watching a few YouTube videos, that’s how I learned pest control 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
You are going to have to work Saturday when it makes no sense to. They will purposefully hold services so you can work all mandatory Saturdays. If you try to clear your schedule they will keep throwing Saturday on your schedule. They will also throw stuff on you at the end of your day in another town that usually isn’t even your route. No communication about any of it. 

You will be in remote locations. No cell service, even during the winter with 2 foot of snow everywhere. Some of your accounts are on seasonal roads also. You will make absolutely no money in the winter ( this is all assuming you’ll be working for the Queensbury NY branch) Mountain Services during the winter prove rather difficult to complete, or even reach. You may not get to a single route during the winter. And you’ll be driving hours from your home. 

Good luck getting the materials you need to do your job. 

Good luck getting proper equipment to do your job. 

Be prepared to get screamed at by almost every single customer in the middle of their living room, because you are probably going to be the 15th technician to walk through their door. 

Absolutely no info about the jobs you’ll be showing up to. You basically have to figure out where everything is on your own when you get to a location. Techs will help you out, but the office will not, and if the tech that did that location is no longer with the company, you’re basically screwed on trying to find out where all the traps and everything are. 

Callbacks are 💯 Free for you. If a customer calls back for any reason, the service you have to perform is free. You will get some really stupid callbacks. I got a call back because a random bee flew into someone’s yard and stung their granddaughter. Their excuse was, “we have pest control and shouldn’t have insects bitting people on our property.” 

The last thing I want to go over is pay. It starts off hourly but ends up commission. The only way you are going to earn extra money, bonuses, or raises, is if you sell. That is it. You are never going to get anything extra. Never. Ever. Unless you sell equipment and extra services, you will never get anything extra. I really have to emphasize that. If you’re a good salesmen, you may do pretty good at this job. If you can’t sell that well, you are never going to get a dime of extra anything. Ever. Don’t even expect it, because you’ll get nothing. Ever. 

If all of that sounds attractive to you, Orkin is the way to go. I highly suggest doing this for a smaller company. The money could balance out else where. I know someone who works for a competitor, they make less of a percent but they make more money because their route is tighter and closer to their house. So it all depends on your situation I guess. My personal opinion, Orkin has too much fat around the meat of what the actual job is. They are more concerned with things unrelated to pest control, and the job suffers for it. The technicians just aren’t treated good there. 






I have too many things I could talk about working for this company. The only plus side to this job was having a heavily monitored truck and cell phone. Any forms of raises/bonuses/etc. were based off of your ratings from customers (which never came in), your daily driving score, and if management liked you. If you ever got on their bad side, you might as well move on because they will never change their mind about you. Uniforms were "supposedly" provided. You were supposed to have two full weeks worth of uniforms, and laundering was taken care of by a third company, but I only had at most 5 complete uniforms, including the spare I kept in my truck. Out of the three managers I dealt with at this branch, only one was an actual nice person who actually cared. 

This company only cares about a few things: How they look (literally and metaphorically, in that order), How much the services cost, and if you can get your route done by the end of the month. They have several systems that they use to decide if you're what they consider a good tech. You're called a route manager, but a more accurate term would be a route-follow-what-the-system-says-or-else tech. Originally we were able to build our own routes, schedule customers on out own based on what made sense and in accordance with customer requests, but lost that so called "privilege" due to it being "abused" and not letting the system schedule itself. This system was supposed to help make our routes efficient and reduce drive time, but all it did was schedule you to go back and forth across your entire service area for each service.  Every. Single. Day. And if you EVER had to make any changes, good luck, maybe it'll stick in the system this time. Service managers would also take services away from you and give them to other techs, without telling you. They loved to front load services (basically load up your schedule for the first two weeks of the month) so that way if things came up at the end of the month you would have time to get to it. It sounded good at first, but in practice it caused more issues and was unnecessarily complicating.

I worked for this company for almost 3 years at two separate branches. The branch I started with was great, management actually listened for the most part, and pretty much everyone got along. And then I transferred to a different branch, and I was there for over a year and still only knew maybe 3-4 other technicians (aside from management) out of about 20. There was always work available, but the second you volunteered for ANY work that favor was immediately abused. If you fell behind for any reason (being out sick, family emergency, vacation) it was up to you to figure out how you were going to complete the month. Management was slow to get any response from unless it benefitted them. I asked for help from my service manager several times over. I had too many account with various restrictions, time requirements, and overall amount of concerns for one technician to handle. I had suggested several plans of actions to my service manager that would have made my schedule manageable. Their response? It was too much work to do, they didn't feel like doing that, and my personal favorite, it would mess up the scheduling system that NEVER worked.

Management is the textbook definition of passing the buck, especially when it comes to excuses, shortcomings, and any issues that came up. Once a year the company holds a meeting where regional management comes in and asks us about any issues or problems were having, complaints, etc. All of this is supposed to be kept away from management as this is their way of being checked on, but a few days after said meeting the branch and a service manager were asking what was said at the meeting and who said what. Raises only happen once a year, your hourly rate is low, and you make "production" on each regular service you complete (which was roughly 5% of what the service cost is). If you're on call for the weekend your "shift" starts as soon as you finish your day Friday and goes through until basically 11:59pm Sunday night. You only get paid if you get a call, which could be anywhere from Truckee to almost San Francisco. 

TLDR:  If you enjoy not having a personal life, not getting bonuses or raises, constantly work overtime doing someone else's work, and failing to meet unrealistic expectations, come sign up and get your ball and chain here. They're always hiring anyways, since they can't keep people around because, as a regional manager told us, "money doesn't grow on trees."

When I first started with the company, I was very enthusiastic and enjoyed being part of a great team. Unfulfilled promises and a feeling of unappreciation caused my outlook to wane until my departure from the company.  When I announced my decision to leave, I did not hear anything from my regional manager, my director of HR, or region admin on how the exit process works. The region sales manager was the only person from leadership to reach out and ask questions, and wish me the best. I was promised an in-depth training program, hands-on learning that would take months to a year to complete, and many other things that never came to fruition. My training was condensed as I was thrown into every position before I was ready. This company has a notorious tendency to fill positions prematurely because they see you as a body, a solution to a problem. Once you are in that position, you are out-of-sight, out-of-mind while you desperately struggle to balance everything and still complete your goals and tasks. The recent change in leadership brought on a numbers-driven mentality, with no regard to appreciating the employees who work extremely hard, attempting to meet the unrealistic expectations set forth. Asking questions, or needing clarification from leadership always came off as bothersome. I was put into the position at the time thinking it was temporary, an area to train in order to transition me back to the location I was previously at. This was definitely not the case. This branch in particular is geographically stretched, so there are a lot of hours clocked daily that are unproductive and stressful as you rack up the windshield time. If there were any issues or concerns in the field, sometimes it would take 2-4 hours just to get where you were going to assist a customer and/or employee, while still expected to answer emails, calls, and texts immediately despite the no distracted driving policy. Deadlines were always sprung on you at the last possible minute, which was a huge inconvenience and once again hindered your ability to perform your duties. The physical branch location was in terrible shape and the urgency to make a change in offices was put on the back-burner. I also felt that we are required to run as lean as we can as far as staffing is concerned. With a geographically challenged area, fewer bodies meant more work for everyone involved, except for our service manager who did not roll out of bed until 10 am, at the earliest. Employees are over-worked and underpaid. For that reason, there was a higher turnover rate, and management is expected to perform the duties of that position(s) while still keeping up with the demand of our own positions. My concerns and struggles fell on deaf ears, and I could not rely on anyone from leadership to provide the resources necessary until I had already announced my two-weeks' notice. I will say thank you to the San Antonio and Killeen branches, as those two locations and management were always willing to lend a helping-hand and provide insight when leadership simply expects you to know everything, or figure it out as you go. At the end of it all, I was grateful to work with a lot of the employees I hired and managed at my location and co-workers at my previous location. This is a very simple industry that is over-complicated and inundated with unnecessary, redundant work that makes everything much more difficult for anyone who takes pride in their work, and the opinions of the customer. Also, for being as large and successful as this company is, there are a lot of obsolete practices and out dated ways of thinking and getting things done such as not being fully paperless. Ultimately, the feeling of just being a "number", and body to fill a position with no appreciation for my hard work, sacrifices made, and dedication to the company was the deciding factor for me to leave. Positive reinforcement and showing appreciation goes a long way...

TLDR:
Do not recommend if you have a family or other outside hobbies that you enjoy. 

If you enjoy having a family, don't bother. You will be required to give your time pretty much from the moment you wake to the moment you sleep. I consistently had to work overtime and always missed events and moments with my family just to make sure i hit their goal for the day. this isn't everyday but guaranteed to happen more times than you'd expect. 

And expect to know you earned PTO, but it doesn't mean you'll enjoy it. You will always come back to no help for your route and will be expected to work overtime to catch up and also do someone else's work on top of that to make sure they hit their numbers. oh and you only get your hourly pay on pto, not your average pay that you make with production so you take a financial hit.  You must always work and work and work to make sure your manager doesn't need to talk to their managers and explain why they are behind, instead of being boots on the ground with their team like a true leader. I enjoy helping as the extra income is awesome, and when its always the same people and the managers cant figure out how to help the situation permanently, you question how they got in their position. 
consistent work is a plus, but at the cost of never having a social life.

Advancement can come to those who enjoy giving up your dignity. It does not matter how much you work for your advancement. If you're not in the "in circle", good luck. You'll be looked over time and time again, even if you have customers singing their praises about you. 

Did I mention the awesome raises, I really enjoyed my extra cup of coffee a month with my huge raise of 6 cents. yes. that's the average, with my best being .11. you will be expected to make up the income you wish to make but selling extra services, which is not always guarantee and be hard for someone needing to take care of a family if they don't always hit those numbers.. some months I made really good, other months I was doing side hustles to get by. but they will pay you in gift cards each month to work more instead of seeing your hard work and giving an honest raise. and you cannot ask for one, it only happens once a year. 

Gave this place 2 chances, both chances let me down. coming back took major convincing and the manager who hired me was AWESOME. fast forward a few years, and that light faded quick. The last service manager and branch manager caused so much stress and anxiety it had me reach back out to therapy and dwindled my motivation in my work and personal life. 


This place is not all bad if you get the right managers and right co workers. there is definitely people I am happy that I can keep in my personal life, but the day I left, I blocked every avenue of contacting me. 

Right off the bat I’m happy to cover the pros, so you do get a company vehicle you get to take home each day and a company gas card. So gas won’t be an issue. Orkin does however charge $60 out of your paycheck for vehicle maintenance. It’s easy to request time off at this company and management was pretty responsive and easy to talk too. I also like that there is really no micromanagement at this role a big plus if you ask me 

Now the cons: You are required to work 1 Saturday each month, this is not mentioned on the actual job description and really cuts into the work-life balance especially if you are a family person. Speaking of job description you will start out as a 1st start tech driving city to city and spending an hour at each stop onboarding new Orkin customers. There is a learning curve here like any other job but time management comes with time with this role. The uniforms continues to be an ongoing issue even when I expressed my concerns with it to the regional manager, uniforms still take a month to get in. I was given two hand me down shirts from the back that had oil stains on it that didn’t come out no matter how hard I tried. In the summer you are given a mosquito blower that if you are lucky won’t leak mosquito chemicals all over the back of your shirt and pants! The company expects you to not use a customers bathroom. Since you will be working 99 percent of the time this become a challenge at times, especially if you have a medical condition and spend an hour at 1st stops. Recognition itself could be improved at this company, there is a in person all staff meeting once a month and during my tenure there we only got paid lunches twice during those meetings. Sometimes if we didn’t perform well as a group there was no paid lunch. This is a role regardless of how well you perform, it comes down to the teams performance in the end. I’ll end by saying this is a good summer job if anything, for the lack of pay for the actual work itself you will at least make up for it by having some good long days in the summer. Now in the winter it’s another story, people don’t think they need pest control and sometimes there is no convincing the customer and they ask you to leave the property. Sometimes there was just no work in the winter and your only options were to study for a test in the office or head home early and take the punch on your paycheck. 

Honestly the work is simple. Only thing I didn't like was the long hours. Management would consistently add more services no matter if it were 3PM. It's as of you were to dangle a piece of candy in form of a kid. In other words you can wake up to only 4 services expect to leave around 11AM, to live this work life balance the so much advertise, and by 10:40 AM they would've added a whole new 11-12 services to your daily schedule to ensure youre working till 5PM. I was the only one who loved super far from the branch yet I always was assigned services furthest away from where I live. I'd even end up doing my last service 2 hours away from home. So it didn't matter if I got out at 3-4 pm I'd get home between 5-8 pm. That is no way to live a life. We work to live not the other way around. Most customer are super entitled and practically boss you around. I get it they are paying for a service and expect a thorough job, but what's the point if you can't even trust the company you hired? Might as well hand the customer the equipment so they can do it. From how much they follow you and how bossy they become. But that's besides the point. The main issue is the life work balance. I would clock in around 100-120 hours every two weeks. All that OT was done without me wanting. So OT is forced upon you and if you decide to say no then it's job abandonment. So be prepared to work long days. 5 days one week and 6 days straight the next week. Yes, two weekends a month are mandatory and they are only on Saturday. Unless you're one of the lucky ones to have a single service on Sunday... I've had other jobs with the same concept of no time off. Yet I would get out earlier, and make more money. Also if you get a route you get a raise but only if the managers feels like it. I've had coworkers who get a route a month into the job and still get paid the same as a starting technician. With be excuse they have to wait 3 months. To just end up never giving the technicians their well deserved raises. Honestly the supervisors don't really try much for the employee only what they want and need is when they will answer their phones texts emails etc. I really thought I had hit the jack pot when orkin hired me, but I didn't realize I gave basically my whole capability of enjoying life. Like I said before we work to live. Not live to work. Some companies really take advantage of how many hours are force upon an employee and they will continue to push the limits so as long as the individual allows it. 

You will not succeed here unless you follow every direction the Branch Manager gives you. This company promotes safe working environment but once you get hurt on the job you are frowned upon. There is no family culture here. No company gatherings or Christmas parties. It's only you, your truck and your work. On-Call starts Friday after your shift at 5pm to Sunday at will of the company and not paid unless you're called out to service an account. This account maybe as far as from Sacramento to the Bay Area to address an ant problem. There is one branch but two different uniformed technicians which is Orkin and Crane. Crane was purchased by Orkin so they get to wear their original uniforms and they get paid $30+ an hour with no commission even though they do the same exact thing as all Orkin Technicians. I was told that would earn $40 to $55k per year first starting. As an Orkin Technician you will be paid $14.50 hr + $0.50 raise when you pass your Branch II Exam. There are no annual raises no matter how hard you work. You will receive a commission/production monthly based on the amount of buildings you service and how much the account is worth. Your monthly salary will solely depend on how big your route is and how many additional odd jobs you complete each month. The Manager decides how big of a route you will have, this is not allocated equally to technicians.
Technicians are told they will receive a route to work that is near where they live but this is not the case. You will most likely have accounts spread out everywhere and expected to complete them by the end of the month. You may be sent to service a Commercial building without having the proper license to legally do so. If you do both you and the employer are breaking the law and you could be possibly fined. 
You will work in extreme weather conditions such as 102 degree heat and rain storms were it is unsafe to drive. If you get sick you will need to find some way to finish your route because their is no one else that is going to help you. They have their own routes to worry about. You will get call-backs. These are accounts you or another Technician have already serviced for the month and you will need to go back to that account. You will only be paid your hourly wage for these call-backs, no commission even if it's someone else's account. There are many other challenges that come working for this company. I hope this answers some of the questions you might have before deciding to work for Orkin/Rollins Inc. God bless.

On the pest control side of things you schedule you own route for the most part, then go treat customers to their needs. Bad part about this is its production pay. So there’s days where you will be traveling from city to city making no money on drive time. If you have a country route which is most, you will be doing a lot of driving where you will not be paid. To many times to count there are days your bouncing from 3 to 4 different cities when it dosent make sense. If you bring this up to management they dont do anything about it just tell you if it’s scheduled that day it needs to be done. They make it seem like it won’t be an ongoing issue but it continues to be. It’s makes you less money but they could care less. On the termite side of things there is a lot more to it. You get hourly rate. You do termite jobs, get in peoples crawls spaces to do crawl encapsulations, crawl insulation, clean and spray the wood, get in peoples attics and extract insulation and replace insulation. You get on roofs and install gutter guards and ridge guards. Most of the time when we get these jobs we are rushed to get them done. When we are on hourly for no extra compensation. Just for the end of the week to hit and they send everybody home because of OT. You have the opportunity to get a bonus but they make the number so high it’s impossible it hit it. Termite techs get railed Day n and day out. They will ask you to go out of state to other branches promising over time and then not give it and send you home at the end of the week. 
The whole time I worked there I could not go to the termite manager with a problem with out him sending me to someone else because he didn’t know. 
Termite manager doesn’t teach you have to safely do a job( you just have to figure it out) 
Termite manager never gets you the equipment for the job when asked or ppe.
Termite manger is a sexist. 
Multiple time when had to call a stop work because management tried to send us into hazardous environments. And they don’t even follow their own stop work policy. 
Management will talk behind the technicians back. Termite tech only get a max of a 3% raise each year. Which is less than dollar. And that is not even guaranteed you might not get a raise, if they think you don’t deserve one. Highly do not recommend this job you will be the face of the company, have the hardest job at this company, and make the least money at this company. They use and abuse their people. 

The branch (local office) I was a part of was suffering the results of years of mismanagement. They had just hired a new manager who was attempting to turn the branch around and was doing a good job.

But that meant all of the painful changes fell on the technicians to sort out with customers.

The hardest part of working for an unorganized branch was that I could do my best to schedule my route for the following day, be diligent to stay organized, but anyone in the office could damage up my whole schedule at the click of a button, and not inform me.

I was told I'd be home after 8 hours of work, but then my route was split between 3 cities that were 36 miles apart at the longest. Most of my days became 12 hour days, with several hours of unpaid traffic time. Most nights I didn't see my family until they were going to bed, or not until the weekend, but we were required to work every other weekend. 

Training was subpar and spotty. There were many times I looked incompetent to customers because I hadn't been trained on basic procedures (I had 10 years of professional corporate and warehouse experience prior to this job).  

Everyone I worked were great people, stuck in a bad situation like me, and some were thrust into roles they were not suited for, but were trying to make the most of it.

For the better part of 5 months, a fellow technician was milking the system, so they punished the entire team to sort out who was stealing company time. They froze all of our apps (the primary way we handled all paperwork legally required by the state and dept of Agriculture for each stop) removing our control from fixing our own routes. When our routes got messed up, it impacted the customer feedback, which messed up our reviews, and in turn lowered our compensation and ability to get higher raises come evaluation time. 

We were expected to have full responsibility for our routes, but had no tools, means, or ability to organize our routes efficiently to manage the routes. 

It seemed that the harder I worked to keep my route stable, the easier things fell apart. 

I never had working equipment (phones, printers, apps), and corporate sat on their hands for months while I waited for my new equipment to get shipped.

I understand that I had a special circumstance experience with this company, and this was all during peak cvd, but that doesn't change the fact that my young family didn't see me for 9+ months, and that my stress levels were through the roof.

Orkin has some of the best training. I tried to take full advantage of all learning opportunities that were available. By doing that I would accept weekend services that were urgent. Take the extra service that some may not be able to get to.Also just do extra work for more experience. By doing so orkin was able to take advantage of my work ethic without compensation as techs would leave you would pick up extra route work for months without compensation. (10+ employees left the branch during the 1 year and 9 months I was employed with orkin.)

Orkin expects a lot of you as they should being one of the most expensive pest controls for homeowners and/or businesses owners. They expect you  To be knowledgeable, keep up great customer communication, and also being professional. 

With that being said orkin will not compensate you fairly. From my own personal research I discovered that as I may be one of the most thorough techs at this orkin branch at the time. I have one of the least paying positions in the pest industry  in my surrounding area. At the time of inflation in early- mid 2022 there was a 11% inflation and I received a raise after my one year. Little to my knowledge I wouldn’t know that I would only receive a 5% raise. 

With all the knowledge I have obtained from this company and as much as I went out my way to work hard. I would be left with the fact that I am still making the same money as to when I first started with no experience. 

I proceeded to try and find another way to get this promotion or raise I was so desperately and deservingly looking for. So I applied for a closer route for the same branch. The service manager and branch manager interviewed me between 30-45 minutes to be told that the position is already filled. Given that frustration I still kept my composure and continued doing my job. 

A couple days later I’m then asked to train the technician they hired for the position I applied for when the new hire has no knowledge of pest control. 

At the end for my personal experience orkin showed me that they’re good at acting as if they care but as months almost a year of this situation goes by you notice all along there actions always spoke louder than there words. They will train you well enough to start your company but won’t treat you well enough to stay. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Pest control technician 165 salaries reported	$70,283 per year
Outside sales representative 54 salaries reported	$82,539 per year
Residential sales 24 salaries reported	$93,271 per year
Home inspector 104 salaries reported	$74,586 per year
Sales representative 39 salaries reported	$81,058 per year

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