The Confession

Herring Sanitation gets to see a great deal of septic systems that have been neglected and the strangest thing happened to our new driver Andrew as he was finished pumping one such tank. 

Andrew arrived at the home to service the Septic Tank and was greeted by a very nervous gentleman.  Andrew proceeded to find the tank and expose the lid. But as he put the hoe into mix the tank up he immediately said ‘I guess it’s been a while since you serviced this tank’. The homeowner who was watching the entire process admitted that it had been quite a while since the tank had been serviced.  Well, to the relief of both the homeowner and Andrew, the tank did not take any extra work to pump. 

When Andrew presented the invoice for payment the homeowner said, ‘can I ask you a question? What is the longest you have heard that a septic tank has not been serviced for?’  Andrew answered honestly with a big smile that he was just fairly new on the job but that the week before he had just near killed himself pumping a tank that had gone 18 years without service.  Andrew went on to say how it took him over two hours, how he had to backwash the tank and how hard it was to mix the solids up and get the grease out of the lines.  He also reported how that homeowner had a wet spot and how their fields were probably ruined.

 

That’s when the homeowner who was talking to Andrew confessed (as if he was telling his doctor that he really doesn’t exercise)   ‘to tell you the truth this tank has never been pumped and it was installed in 1987.’ 

Lucky! Lucky!    Andrew reported to the office that surprisingly the tank was in his words ‘not bad at all’.  

 

Now our advice is, don’t try it.  Board of Health recommends pumping a Septic Tank every two to three years for a reason.    

Who Says Your Boss Can't Be Funny??

Jim and Sharon Herring have a large family and a few of them work for Herring Sanitation.  The disclaimer they give, in jest, for their children’s behavior is that most of them are adopted.  Just kidding, they are all adored. But you can be sure that they are all characters. 

One evening the loudest, most dramatic of the bunch, Amy broke her thumb while rough housing and immediately called her Mom and Daughter who were at the Gym.  Amy started yelling loudly “Oh!!! Aha!!! Ouch!! You have to wrap it up, NOW!  You must come home IMMEDIATELY”!   Amy then started to breathe HEAVY!  Now keep in mind Amy is loud when she’s not upset and in pain. She was breathing, In and Out and In and Out, slowly with some moaning going on too.

Well, the bottom line is Amy mis-dialed and instead of her Mother she got Joe, a worker from Herring Sanitation that Amy happens to oversees in the Portable Toilet Division.

Now if Joe was at home alone this would not have been so funny but as it happened Joe was sitting around with his buddies having a beer.   When his phone rang, Joe looked at the caller ID, saw that Amy was calling and he thought "What did I do now?"

 

Answering the phone, Joe heard all the screaming and noise and was confused so he cautiously asked “Who’s this?”  

Amy who was busy breathing hard thought she heard her Dad and said loudly “Get Mom”, moan, moan and started breathing hard again.  Remember she’s loud and it’s In and Out, and moan and In and Out.

 

At this point one of Joe’s friend said “Who’s that?

Joe said “My boss”.

His buddies looked at each other and said “Is she hiring?”

Finally, Amy heard a voice that she didn’t recognize.  She looked at the phone and said “Who’s this?”  Joe said innocently and sweetly, because this guy is sweet “It’s me Joe”.  Amy said, with amazing speed, “Oh sorry, Joe. See you tomorrow.” and quickly hung up.

Joe called her back to see if she was OK because he thought the way Amy was breathing that she might have been in a car accident.  His buddies; who knows what they were thinking?

Let me tell you when we overheard Amy and Joe recounting the phone call mistake, we had to get the details.  We laughed so hard over this, we just had to share. 

Is YOUR dog outside?

One of our drivers came back to the office the other day saying "you have to blog about this!"

Derek was dispatched from the office of Herring Sanitation to a home that needed septic service.  As he arrived he pulled his truck up in front of the house. As is his usual practice, Derek wanted to get out of the truck and go up to the door to introduce himself.  He began to open the door of his truck but quickly stopped when he saw, in his words, "a Staffordshire Terrier, Pit Bull mix dog running around the beautifully mainicured front yard like a nut".  Derek continued his story "so I called the homeowner and asked  'Does your dog bite?' and the lady anserwed sheepishly, 'Well, no she doesn't'." Derek got out of the truck with this nut of a dog running all around him and when Derek rang the door bell he heard the bark of what he knew was a little dog coming from inside the house.

You had to see Derek's face as he told his tale. 

Derek had the attention of everyone in the office as he can really tell a good story. We were all listening carefully and intently and at this point he caused us to all burst out laughing because we knew in an instant the dog outside and running around was NOT the homeowner's dog.

As the homeowner opened the door to greet Derek she quickly closed the door to just a crack. 'That's not my dog' she told Derek who was now abandoned and on his own with the crazy dog as he proceeded to pump the septic tank.

Well, Derek survived without getting a dog bite or two and he reported to the office that he has put some thought into what he'll do the next time he sees a dog running loose outside. His questions will be one of two.

"Does your dog bite?"   AND  "Is your dog outside?"

Did Dad Really Help???

Not sure I should share this story but it is one of my favorites and certainly one of the most embarrassing.

 

Back in 1974, Herring Sanitation had been in business for just over one year when Jimmy Herring was in a motor cycle accident.  Sharon (that’s me) had just arrived in Queens to visit my father when we got the call saying there was an accident. Immediately I headed back to Hopewell Junction.  My Dad and sister were with me for the anxious ride home but Jim luckily just had a broken collarbone and a sprained ankle.  My Dad agreed to stay up in the ‘country’ and help us out while Jim healed.

 

The following day Herring Sanitation took an emergency call to pump a tank.  My Dad who was a professional boxer and a tough guy from Queens volunteered to go do the labor.  I drove the truck and knew how to operate things so I gratefully agreed to accept his help.

 

So there we are the three of us, Jim, my Dad and me off to help these people who were having a septic backup.  We get to the job site and the tank was not exposed or dug up, so my Dad, the city boy, had to dig up the tank as Jim supervised.  The husband and wife were surrounding us talking about the motorcycle accident and watching everything transpire. My Dad was sweating and breathing deep as he worked a shovel probably for the first time. The homeowners were very nice people and it was a beautiful Sunday and the pleasant conversation did not set the mood for what was about to happen.

 

My Dad, out of breath after having dug up his first and might I say, last septic tank, was taking instruction from Jim on how to pry open the five foot round steel cover and manage to lift it up.  That was when he took his first look into a septic tank. 

 

All of a sudden my Dad says out loud “What are you running here? A F _ _King whore house?”   

 

I almost died. As I looked down I saw that the entire top of the tank was covered with, you guessed it, condoms.  Oh yes they float. I was ready to kill my father.  He looked at me with a sad puppy dog look and says “Well Hon, look! I'm right. I've never seen so many of them.”  As if that can explain away using that curse word.  Oh forget it.  As if that can explain pointing out the obvious.

 

Immediately the wife ran off into her home.  The husband just before he too walked away said in a very quite serene tone “We don’t use those and the upsetting thing is we only have daughters, five of them.”  Nowadays, I imagine, this would have been no big deal but back in the early 1970’s, women just didn’t do those things.   (Oh, I guess they did.)

 

So as you can imagine our ride home in that truck was interesting.  My Dad kept saying “They were going to see them anyway” and NO!  I never let my Dad help out again. 

 

But today with my Dad's birthday approaching it is a really fond memory of how ready my Dad always was to help us even if he didn't know what he was getting himself into.

 

Oh! If you happen to be the customer from that day and you’re reading this blog, I never had the chance to say I’m sorry for my Dad’s comment but  I really hope that you too are able to laugh about that day now.

 

 

Please be sure to visit our website at HerringSeptic.com.

Hiring for a Septic Service

When Jimmy and Sharon started Herring Sanitation they had no idea how big their business would grow. By some scales, it is small but to the two young people that just wanted to feed their family, it's big.  At times, as the season gets busy, Herring employs upwards of twenty people.  Keeping things running smoothly takes the right people and finding them is not always easy.  Sharon often says with a laugh that "You don't often find people that wake up and say 'I want to pump S_ _ _ for a living' so when you do, you try to keep them". 

All small businesses must face the same dilemma as they grow.  Eventually you have to hire and trust that the person you are sending out to your customers is going to do the job that you can stand behind and be proud of.  How you find them and groom them is a process that is both fun, frustrating, delightful and frightful. As Herring Sanitation is now in their fortieth year in business, they look back and realize that all the workers that have come through their door, whether they stayed for a long stretch or left after the first three hours, were here for the same reason the Herrings started the business.  They were just trying to feed their family.  Herring Sanitation will always be grateful for their efforts and for the good laughs some of them have supplied as they learned to work the vacuum trucks.

Can you imagine what it's like if you're at the back of a Septic Truck and you think it's on suck and you open the valve to find it's on blow?  Oh yes! It happens and even to the experienced workers.  Our opening speech or warning on the first day of work for all new workers is 'you will eventually take a bath'.  When they are still working for us past that first bad experience, Herring knows we have hope and to add to our joy, we now can share a good laugh with each other.  Laughing at Herring Sanitation is what makes the day go faster and smoother.

If you come into the break room at Herring Sanitation the talk that you will hear is a language all our own. You'll think you joined an X-Rated conversation. You'll hear things such as "Did you try sucking?" and "Blowing sometimes works better", "Did you use the big hoe?" "No I need the female end" and when someone walks in all wet you'll hear "Oh My God ! Did you just take a bath?"   But to all the people at Herring,  it makes the day go faster.

Our own comments are not the only entertainment we can find in a day's work. Herring Sanitation shares some laughs with their customers also.  As the caller try to explain their problems and who in their house uses too much toilet paper and whose fault the back up is, keeps just about everyone in on that call laughing.  On the job when the men are looking at all the wet wipes clogging the baffle or lines and the husband and wife start blaming each other, well, that can get scary when you're in the middle of that.   One of our drivers who after chopping away at a huge wad of caked grease around the septic baffle was told "MY WIFE NEVER FLUSHES GREASE DOWN OUR DRAIN". Assuming the customer is always right, the driver did his job and quietly returned to our office. When he burst through the door at the office he stated, "This customer must have terrible neighbors!  Someone is coming over and flushing grease down their drain".  We all laughed.

Not to play down how very frustrating this job can be for our guys out searching for septic tanks in the freezing cold or 100 degree weather.  Herring has had many guys quit out of frustration after a hard day and yes, we do hire them back when they are ready.  Keeping good help is hard when the job is hard.  You really have to imagine that everyone thinks that any step from working for a septic company is a step up. Herring keeps that in mind and tries to compensate their workers with the best working environment they can offer. Keeping it fun and being understanding has helped Herring Sanitation get through the past 40 years and hopefully yet another busy season.

Monster Roots

Many things can happen to your septic system when you suspect all is quite.  How can you prepare? 

Regular maintenance is the answer.  It gives you or at least your trusted septic guy an eye on the problems before you see any symptoms.  This photo above is one Herring Sanitation took of a problem we found for a homeowner that did not have regular maintenance performed on their septic tank.  When all was quite this pipe filled up with a monster root until nothing was going down the drain at all. The homeowner and their new septic guy (that would be Herring Sanitation) were shocked at what they found.  The entire pipe was full of roots so we knew we had to get a photo.  To help explain what the pipe should look like, we put a new pipe along side in the photo (that would be the one on the right that is the new one).

The photo above is of a root bed that quietly continued to grow until the top of the septic tank was compromised and destroyed.  So when all seems quite, you might be in trouble.  The solution - Regular Maintenance and you can rest easier.

To Flush or Not to Flush? That is the question.

Did you ever wonder what Flushable means?

Just because the manufacturers of wet wipes or feminine products claim that they are flushable, don't flush them.  This pump is less than 18 months old and NO it is not covered by warranty when it looks like this.  That mess you see is wet wipes.  This pump belongs to one unhappy homeowner.  The pump couldn't pump any water causing the pump to burn out.

Herring Sanitation believes that manufacturers of products use the word 'Flushable' because the item can actually make it down the toilet when flushed, but what happens then to the components of your septic system.

Herring Sanitation says if it doesn't come out of you or isn't toilet paper, DON'T FLUSH IT.

Check out our web site at HerringSeptic.com.