Everything the first guy wrote about the interview process is accurate. I actually worked at K.A.W.S. For a few months. Before I go into all the negatives (there are a lot) I would like to say that it's not all bad. I actually thought the job was fun the majority of the time I worked there, but it's not for everyone. If you want to pursue a career in sales and don't have much or any experience, its a good learning opportunity. It is however both door to door sales and a networking pyramid scheme. I would not recommend this job to someone who has a family to feed or many bills to pay as few of the people who work there have both a car and a house or apartment. If you're in your late teens or early 20's and want to make a little cash and get some sales experience, it may be beneficial for you. With no further ado, here are my personal reasons for leaving;
1) The straw that broke the camel's back were my strong suspicions that temporary interns (pretty girls in college) were receiving base pay, while the majority of employees, some of which had been working there for nearly a year were commission only. The boss told us all point blank that no one in the office was receiving base pay. However, the person who does the recruiting for the office told us as a group that we should tell the people that we interview that the pay was a "mixed pay structure" that may include both salary and commission. She went on to say that the boss had offered someone base pay, and that the boss was the boss and he could do whatever he wanted. The check stubs also changed to include a section that included base pay. I felt that giving people special treatment who hadn't earned it over people who had worked there longer was unfair.
2) The job itself in many areas is illegal. The boss said that our territory had been pre-screened and that anywhere we went we were allowed to be there. This wasn't true. While I was there, several people including myself received tickets for soliciting. Bigger black folks and people who were tall or stood out in someway were the most likely to have this issue. After you get so many tickets in a certain county it becomes a bigger deal than simply paying a fine. You begin looking at jail time. A few people had to quit for this reason, although we were not told this was their reason for leaving. Another reason would be given, which was sometimes partially true; "so and so had to leave bc their kid is sick". When I got my ticket I was assured it was "not a big deal" (this is using indifference which is part of the 'system' they teach) and that the boss would take care of it. So I gave my ticket to the boss thinking that the issue had been resolved. Well, a few months later I received a ticket in the mail informing me that I had a warrant out for my arrest for soliciting. The boss again assured me it was not a big deal and that I should just go to court and pay it and he would reimburse me. He said he would deposit the dollar amount of the ticket into my direct deposit account. I stressed that I wanted the reimbursement to be separate from my weekly check bc I didn't want taxes taken out and I wanted to see that he had reimbursed me. My ticket amount was $135. I never received a deposit in my account for this amount. One of my former employees who had gotten many tickets doing the job was looking at spending ten days in jail in the event that his ticket was not paid by a certain date. The boss told him it was no big deal and that he had sent a check in the mail for the ticket amount. According to my coworker he didn't. Fortunately, my coworker did not just take the boss's word for it and went to the courthouse himself and paid for it.
3) They stress that everything is "merit based". This is not true. The boss's favorite people get the best areas to pitch and the best interviews. We were told that you get interviews based on how well you do in terms of sales. However, this is only the case when the bosses favorite people performed the best.in the event that someone who was not in the boss's inner circle performed the best on a given week, they still may not get any interviews the following week. If they do get interviews, they may not be quality interviews. For example, I had a few interviews who started the job who had difficulty memorizing the script and even pronouncing the words "fiber optics". You want as many interviews as you can get (assuming they can read and memorize a script) bc that's how you win the networking pyramid scheme. Once you interview someone and they start, they are on your team. Once you build your team up and they produce 4k worth of sales a week, then you get promoted. As with interviews, the boss's inner circle of favorites get the best territory. Obviously, not all of the territory is equal. People in lower income areas such as Morrow, Rex, and much of Stone Mountain will often not pass a credit check whereas people in Alpharetta, Kennesaw, and Gainesville usually will. If you get bad territory then it is more difficult to get sales and you don't make much money for the week or get any interviews.
4) The office politics were another reason I left. At first it seemed like everyone really liked each other. However, I came to find out that there was a lot of pettiness and malice present in the office. This is not something that everyone was caught up in.in fact, it was limited to only a few in the boss's inner circle. If these people did not like you, they would put pressure on you to quit or not produce any sales. One method they would use to accomplish this is what I termed 'subliminal whispering'. Subliminal whispering is when you influence someone's subconscious by whispering to them. You don't want them to actually hear you. For example, we had an expression when someone didn't make any sales. It was called "rolling a zero" or simply to "roll" as an abbreviation. So members of the inner circle would whisper for people who had gotten on their bad side to "roll". Members of the inner circle did this to a few of my friends. I don't know if they did it to me or not, but I made it a point to move if they were standing behind me. I am aware that this sounds crazy, however these people believed that it worked and I am convinced that it works at least to an extent. I asked the boss about it and he encouraged me to experiment with subliminal whispering, thus acknowledging that he had heard about it and implying that he believed it worked. However, when I expressed concern that people in the inner circle were using it to sabotage others he assured me that no one in the office would use the subliminal whisper in that fashion.
These are the main reasons I left, although there are others. Although this sounds awful, it wasn't all bad. With the exception of the inner circle people, everyone else who worked there was great. I enjoyed the job itself. We would play games in the office which I enjoyed. If you do it for awhile you will definitely gain sales experience and knowledge. It just got to a point for me where the bad outweighed the good.
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