I answered an ad about a 28 year old opening her own business and "needed help".in the interview I found out it was a perfume wholesale distributor that generally sold to small mom & pop businesses, dept stores, etc. The idea was that we would go through 5-8 weeks of training before receiving the elusive "keys" to our office (where we would be manager over a large staff, and make quite a bit of money). Everyone focused on "getting those keys".
However, the "training" turned out to be door-to-door (business, mostly) sales of colognes. We were told we were being trained to do what our staff would be doing, so we could train them. During this training, we were paid strictly on commission.
RED FLAGS:
1. Several people who had their keys still frequented the office in which we trained, still went out selling, and still went on road trips (multi-day excursions to other cities to sell).
2. We fanned out through most of the Hampton Roads area (Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, VA Beach, etc.) and our most frequent response was along the lines of "someone came through a few days ago", "already bought some", etc. Many would tell us before we even told them what we sold that they didn't want perfume. WHY WOULD WE BE OPENING UP MORE OFFICES IN AN AREA THAT WAS ALREADY HEAVILY SATURATED???
There were MANY other red flags, but the bottom line is this: it is a SCAM. The keys will never materialize, and if they do, you won't be making the $50,000/year in your "office" that you are promised.
I'm glad it only took me 1 wasted week of my life to figure this out. Others had been there 3-5 weeks, some even more than that.
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