I went to Phillips/Carlyle after seeing them either in the paper or on the web. Forgive me, but it's been since 2000. Anyway, I hesitantly scheduled a meeting. When I arrived, I filled out a long questionnaire and then met with Mark Brown, who runs the show there.
Mark Brown was a very clean cut, churchy looking guy with glasses and perfectly groomed hair and nice clothes/shoes. He appeared very reputable, judging by his top floor office and appearance. He was a very fast talking, enthusiastic man who assured me that he could help me by tapping into untapped and unpublished jobs. The fee? $3500. I have a lot of common sense, unfortunately, not 100% intuition. I pondered for two days if I should do this. I ran it by my dad, who is a retired multimillionaire apartment developer from Houston, who has more sense than I do. He thought it might be a good idea, judging by what I told him, and he floated me a $3500 check (since I could not afford that due to the layoff).
After paying the fee, I enjoyed all the rewards of my investment. Of course I am being sarcastic. My first visit back to the office was an information session in which I, along with 4 other men, participated in a day-long session on how to land the jobs. It was a worthless well-duh kind of session. It was led by a guy named Dick Grieswold, or something like that. At least I got a free lunch out of the deal.By the way, the other customers in the meeting were total cretins. I felt like Einstein there. It was obvious at that point that these vultures bilk whoever they can, whenever they can. The other guys in the session couldn't land a job at a slaughterhouse.
After the information session, I returned a few days later to do a mock interview in front of a camera with a guy named Terry Nash. Again, this was a joke. It only lasted about 20 minutes, and I was critiqued. It was a total waste of time and a total farce.
A day later, I went back to their offices, and I went through the unpublished jobs, which I could have found myself on the Internet. These were jobs I had already seen before. I was pissed off at this point, and also feeling like a rape victim.
I returned a few times after that to look at the jobs, but it was the same old story. Stuff I had seen before by myself, without having to pay $3500.
Mark Brown and his cronies need to be stopped. I would salivate at the chance for a lawyer to represent me and hit them for all they're worth. I want to send Mark Brown from his plush home, to the corner of I-35 and Mockingbird, washing car windshields at stoplights.
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