People do not realize just how easily they spread. As an example, when we remove furniture from an apartment, we destroy it so no one will pick it up out of the trash. But you see people doing that all the time, picking up clothing or furniture left on the streets for the sanitation department to remove and it is loaded with bugs, that is why it is out there. Or the moving vans that people use to transport their furniture from one bed bug-filled apartment to another. You can pick these bugs up on the subway, in taxis, in the best hotels. It is a real problem and that is why we are in business, to help prepare for the exterminator and to help people learn what they can do if they suspect they have them in their homes or offices.
When we finished lunch, Ms. Hecker took me to the room in her apartment where she does the majority of the desk work--where she pays the bills, writes out the paychecks, orders the massive numbers of supplies her work crews need, schedules the jobs and talks to potential clients, like I had been. It was not as messy as my office tends to be and there was a peacefulness in the room that must make her work routine less anxiety-producing.
It had never occurred to me that such a business existed or that it could be so prosperous. But Ms. Hecker has done what they tell us to do in those "How to Start Your Own Business books--find a need that no one else is meeting now and do the background research and make it happen. That is what Yasmine Hecker has been able to do. And she does it in such an admirable way. I am sure she is talking people down from roofs a good deal of the day. We all seem to respond to this epidemic in similar ways--we are horrified, we do not know what to do, we discover we own too many things and have to live with them bagged up for a few weeks and then as we put them away, we hope we never have to do this again.
But if I do ever have this problem again, I would call Ms. Hecker. I am sure her business will survive and thrive, not just because of the excellent work her company does but because of the kindness she offers to all of us strangers--another part of the work she does that not many others offer either.
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