No wonder my lawn is so green

A TruGreen truck pulls up in front of my house about 8:10am this morning. I am on a phone conference for work, so I happened to be in my office, which is at the front of the house, and see the whole thing.

Since I get these TruGreen advertisements in my lawn every once in a while, my first reaction was to roll my eyes, as my lawn is green and weed-free, so anyone can look at it and see I am doing fine with what I am doing and don't need to pay for a lawn service.

He opens up a door on the side of his truck facing the house, and there are three rolls of yellows hoses. He pulls out one hose, and starts walking up the driveway, where I have a row of three rose bushes. This seems odd to me, so I am paying close attention.

He looks at the ends of the bushes, but doesn't spray anything. He then walks to the other side of the driveway, beyond my view. I wait for him to return, but after a few minutes, he doesn't, so I walk out there.

As I walk out the door, the man is standing right there.

"What are you doing?" I ask in a normal tone."Spraying the bushes," he said."Why?"

He mentioned that it was part of my treatment plan, or something to that affect, to which I told him that I am not on any plan, and that I have never paid for anything.

"This costs money, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, I have never paid for this."
"You didn't sign up?"
"No."
"Well I've been doing this property for some time."

I LOVE this response. People use this approach all the time to defend a mistake, as if the frequency and time period the fuck-up has taken place has any relevance on the legitimacy of the mistake.

Being on the phone, I didn't want to argue at that point, but I wanted to make clear I am not a customer of this service, so I said: "Okay, that's fine, but I am not paying for it," and walked inside.

The man then got in the truck and left, although it wasn't clear to me if he was done anyway or he left early because of the conversation. He did stop a few houses down from mine and work on someone else's lawn, so I don't think this was a case of my house being targeted for something suspicious or that he was unethical... my guess is that our builder had this service, and after we bought the house a year ago, no one told TruGreen in the office, and as people are mostly incompetent, the office never informed the man on the street.

Two other interesting points:

1. The guy never actually sprayed anything, so if I were paying for the service, I wasn't getting anything for it. The bushes are healthy and fine anyway.

2. He said he has been on this property for a long time, which surprised me that I have never seen him before. However, I assume he only comes in the summer (and we bought the house at the end of last summer, so this was the first full summer we've been in it, and I typically don't work at home in the summer because my wife is home with the kid (she is a teacher), so if he came once a month, it is possible we've missed him, especially if he is just looking at healthy bushes for thirty seconds before moving on.

Bizarre. I don't like strangers walking around my property, let alone spraying chemicals I am not aware of.