Eeeh!

I once worked at an office with a roach problem. It was not uncommon for my coworker to open her desk drawer only to have a roach crawl out.

But the worst was when one jumped into my hair. Or fell. I don't think roaches "jump," exactly, but it doesn't matter, because IT WAS IN MY HAIR.

You should totally bring this roach thing up with the boss. Ick!

Ick, that's gross youngergirl.

Looks like it's time for the ziploc bag treatment.

Ew ew ew. Ew.
How long had the crackers been open?

Boric acid all around your desk. It won't get rid of all the roaches but it will likely keep them from roaming and living on your desk.

The crackers had been open since yesterday. Apparently they have sprayed for roaches in the past because another woman in the office told me to tell someone else that I found one, so they might need to spray again. I will probably make some of these Boric Acid marble things to put in my desk drawers and in the office. But I don't much like the idea of finding dead roaches either.

/gets willies

boric acid++

It works best when it's placed near where they hang out, smoke, and swap stories. It's a slow poison for them so they tend to die near Roach HQ.

I once worked for a law firm where I was seconded for a short while the Intellectual Property dept. They were dealing with a dispute about the patent/design of two almost identical roach traps. They looked like shoe boxes and you pull off an adhesive strip inside, leave the box somewhere overnight and the roaches are attracted by a pheremone given off and crawl into their roachy doom.

So me and another guy were messing with these things, tore off the strips and forgot about them.

Next morning, they were full of roaches. I'd never seen a cockroach before (they're not common in England) and I almost fainted and barfed at the same time. The building had to be evacuated and fumigated. It was one of those horrid 60s concrete slab buildings near Paternoster Square, with plenty of cavities for roaches to live.

eBay is your friend here. Buy some traps. They are cheap and effective. Make it clear that it's not your job to dispose of the roaches that are caught in it.

There's no instant cure for cockroach problems, but boric acid powder is highly effective if spread properly, and given time to work. It does take 3 to 5 weeks to work, however. Here's why.

Boric acid is not a contact poison for adult cockroaches. Basically, it's a dessicant (a material that dries them out) and a slow stomach poison, which they pickup on their legs, and ingest as they groom, and track back to their central nests, where the eggs are tyically laid. A lot of adult roaches die in the nest as a natural course, providing food for young roaches, and that's really where boric acid does its work. The crystals that juveniles ingest from the bodies of dead adults, plus whatever crystals drop from adults as they return to the nest before they groom themselves, interfere with the maturation of juveniles, by dessicating them and acting as a slow stomach poison. It may take 2 or 3 generations of juveniles maturing, going out, tracking in more boric acid, and passing it on to subsequent generations, but it works.

In heavily infested buildings, it may be a matter of 60 to 80 days to get control of German cockroach infestations, based on the 21 day maturation cycle of that species, and other species will vary according to their maturation. In subsequent generations, you may even find that those roaches you do continue to see seem smaller, as a higher proportion of juveniles are around, as fewer mature to full sized adults.

Some commercial pest control agencies add contact sprays containing poisons to boric acid treatments, so that there are apparent "dead roaches" about (evidence that their treatment "works"), but by themselves, spray treatments will not wipe out a nest, as boric acid crystals will. In fact, for fastest elimination of the nest, some people recommend not using additional contact poisons, to maximize the amount of boric acid tracked back to the nest by adults that would otherwise die away from the nest.

It's also a really bad idea to allow food to be kept anywhere but in a central kitchen area, if you're in a building with roach problems. If there are distributed food caches, and people eating throughout the building (creating crumbs and small spills), effective pest control is a lot more problematic, and unlikely to be 100% effective. Remove the food and liquids to selected kitchen areas, treat those areas effectively with boric acid crystals, and keep that discipline, and in 60 days or so, your work environs will be roach free, and they'll stay that way.

At my co-op in Austin we had a chronic roach problem from students carrying food back to their rooms, leaving dirty dishes there, etc. We had a huge argument spanning many house meetings and came up with essentially what paulsc said. (This was all pre-Internet, when a personal computer was about as common for students as a Beer Meister, so supporting research was more of a chore.)

We had a couple of people who were asked to drop their memberships -- i.e. move out -- because (a) they were slobs who (b) would not submit to having their rooms treated with boric-acid "marbies," but we got the sitch under control in the "commons" (kitchen, TV room, dining room, study room, hallways, storerooms). It took us all summer and well into the fall, but we were highly motivated and diligent.

I used a commercial "roach paste" when I lived in apartments with roaches. It worked quite well, but it isn't instant.

I've had a workplace infested with giant, fierce, and fearless rats... but think roaches might be worse.

It's more difficult to get rid of them at work than at home, because you can't control everything at work, so you should get your employers to do a professional extermination, if at all possible.

I was treated to a baby rat scampering across the platform at Queensboro plaza this morning... he was kind of a cute little bugger. It was funny watching people jump out of the way. (Not that I'd want him in my crackers. Yikes. You're braver than I am.)

*jumps up from chair screaming sprays Simple Green on everything and runs into the parking lot* AAAHHH squirm squirm ewwww ROACHES