Buffer: i knew this company was a scam going into it i took the job because i thoguht i could do better not because i was conned or recruited so dont rebuttle me with "if the company is so horrible why did you take the job"
This is a long detailed report but very informative please take the time to read my 9 month multi state scam story
Sports marketing position ava now: thats the ad i saw on monster.com/craigslist/hotjobs / etc these guys RECRUIT not hire but recruit everywhere. HERE IS HOW MY SMART CIRCLE EXPERIANCE REALLY WENT.
DAY 1 AND 2
I APPLIED ON LINE with a resume full of bartender jobs and one job selling cars. I was called within 2 hours and told that based on my resume (haha) that they would like to schedual an interview for me, so i went and interviewed the next day (i knew it was a multi level marketing company but i was young and convinced i could make it to the top) so my "interview" consisted of waiting in a room with 8 other "candidates" aka recruites and then having a 45 second convo with the "assistant manager" even though the ad says you will be interviewed by the owner. Now even though i showed up 45 minutes late due to car trouble I was told I would hear back by 7 pm and sure enough at 6:59 i got a phone call saying that I recieved one of 2 offers for a follow up interview and to come in the next day dressed warm and wearing comfortable shoes (RED FLAG RED FLAG) because i would have an in field evaluation that would last 8 hours.
DAY 3 MY "EVALUATION" i show up 30 minutes late jsut to see what happens, and sure enough its no problem, im there with 3 other "evaluies" even though the day before I was told i recieved 1 of 2 spots (red flag red flag) so the evaluation begins with my "interviewer/recruiter buying me a soda to show me how much money he had and the day begins:
7:30 am we leave the office in 10 degree weather and 5 inches of snow to head into the "field" which takes about 45 min to our destination (5 of us in a saturn) and we pay for our own gas. The entire ride there im getting what I will later learn is called the car ride pitch, basically starting the recrtuiting process and bragging about the company with a slew of false facts and straight up lies.
8:15 we arive in the ghetto of jersey city and i find out what we really do here at smart circle/world access marketing... For the next 8 HOURS we walk door to door in the ghetto in 5 inches of snow impersonationg OSHA officials high pressure selling first aid posters eye wash kits fire extinguisher arrows etc etc to people to more or less dont speak english and FEAR is our number one close to make sales
1:00 we take lunch and i get the breakdown COMPOSED ON THE BACK OF A FREAKIN NAPKIN of how this magical company works which i will touch on later but here is a quick rundow. The entire time your 100% comission making about 10 bucks for each piece of scam merchendise OR as they call it MERCH you sell all while paying for your own gas and all of your own expenses. Im then told in back to back sentances that the way to move up in the company is to "teach and train other" aka recruit and the very next sentance to "fear of loss me" is that WE ALMOST NEVER HIRE" WELL OK moron you cant tell me you never hire but the only way to move up is to teach and train the new people you hire
5:00 pm my interviewer still has not sold one piece of MERCH so i ask to take a shot, he tells me sure but i dont have any training and not to feel bad if i dont sell anything, in the next 3 doors i sell four pieces of merch, confirming my suspitions of "im smarted than these jokers"
6:30ish we go back to the office and i am told by my interviewer that he is going to go to the owner and "go fight for me to get hired" (yea right i sold your merch for you and this is a business that revolves around teaching and training but your gonna go "fight for me" (i dont think this guy can walk and chew gum) 10 minutes go by (again trying to fear of loss me) and he comes out and says it was a hard one but we would like to offer you a position (surprise surprise) but the conditions were that I had to start the very next day AKA DONT TAKE ANY TIME to talk to outside influences and certainly there would be no giving two weeks notice at my current job. And he wanted to see a little more effort from me (this is a mind game used to make sure I dont feel like I knew everything even though I sold more merch on my interview than my 'MANAGER"
Next phase: i am a distributer
Now that I have accepted the position as a distributer here is what the next 3 weeks consisted of until I was "promoted" to a "manager"
I saw about 30 people get recruited and quit within the first week if not the first day and each time someone quit the other distributers were told that the person was let go so that we wouldnt quit too, this is called avoiding a domino effect.
I would arrive at the office at 7 am in my suit (didn't matter if it was nice or not because we all wore winter coats in "the field" aka walking into peoples businesses uninvited and attempting to solicite them with out permits. The suits were there to make the new recruits feel like we were actaully a legit company. We would have a 15 minute joke of a sales meeting/training and that was usually followed by story time with paul wyatt with some insperational babble to make us feel like we were doing the right thing. Then we would get with a leader untill about 7:45 and "practice pitch" or say the three same sentances over and over while our leader tried to build our confidence by telling us how great we were at saying the the same three sentances over and over
At about 8 am 4 or 5 of us usually 2 "leaders" 2 "distributes" and an interviewe or trainee would pile into a tiny car split a tank of gas which as I mentioned we have to pay for by our selves and we would walk into every business on our map and try and sell discounted sports tickets hotel packages or cruises etc etc. On a good day you might make 100 dollars, minues one dollar for every person that pays with a check or credit card minute 10-15 dollars you will spend of food, minus 10 dollars for gas, so on a good day as a distributer you would net about 60 bucks before taxes that you pay yourself over the course of a 12 hour day so on a good day your looking at maybe 5 bucks an hour to walk in the freezing cold uninvited into peoples business's and interupt there work.
On the second day there I witnessed one of my coworkers get arrested for soliciting without a permit (which is what we do 10 hours a day) but when I asked my "leader" about it he assured me that it was ok because "paul wyatt always bails everyone out" WOW! So clealry this is a reoccuring problem
On the fifth day there I saw a cup of juice thrown at one of my coworkers by a business owner who had been ripped off by us in the past
Fast forward 3 weeks: i get promoted to leader thsi is when the real fun starts
Basically as a leader it is your job to recruit, and what that consists of is taking people with good jobs with benifits, convincing them to take a job with us, burn bridges by not giving 2week notcie but jsut starting the very next day, working rediculous hours for very little pay and eventually teaching them the ability to minipulate and scam others as well. But the best part about the leadership positon is the pay increase, oh no wait i mean decrease. Please allow me to explain in this break down
As a leader you still only make 10 dollars a card on a good card (a card is what we sell to people) so on an outstading day you sell everything you have which is called "dropping port" you even get to ring a shiny bell in the office for being such a sales stud, but anyway dropping port is 15 pieces or 150 dollars, lets take a great day of selling 10 (you get to ring a smaller bell) thats equals 100 whopping dollars in your pocket, minus about 5 for fee's so your down to 95, minus 20 for lunch because you have to buy lunch for yout trainiee now your down to 75, minus 10 for gas, now yound down to 65 minus 5 more for a soda here and a bag of chips there, your down to 60, NOW HERE IS THE BEST PART at the end of the day you own the monkey yhats been following yo aroudn trying to learn (and i say monky because we are told to hire basically anyone with a pulse) but you owe this guy $60 of your money for training O YES THATS RIGHT YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR TRAINEE FOR THE DAY AND IT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE SOMEONE YOU HIRED. Leaving you with a net profit of 00000000 dollars and 0000000000 cents. Now lets say you dont make a single sale which does happen, you still have to pay out your trainie so you could actually work a 12 hour day and it could cost you $60 plus expenses to go in when all was said and dont
MY FIRST ROAD TRIP: real quick a road trip is when u and some other guys go somewhere far away, pay for your own gas AND YOUR OWN HOTEL and sell these products somewhere else, so basically you take this horrible paying job and add $500 week expense to in and go to place further away from your product making it even harder to make money
Now that im a leader I get the oppertunity of a life time, on four days notice i get to leave my friends my family my apartment and my girlfried to pick up and move to a new state to get a step closer to owning my own rip off office.
So i take the oppertunity and move, in our house we have people from 26-20 living here there are 5 of us in 2 bedroom, so 2 people shared rooms and one slept on a couch for 6 months. If this company doesnt sound appealing yet let me give you 2 more quick storys. On the second day out there my friend / coworker WAS ROBBED AT GUNPOINT because we were instructed to go sell oil change cards in the ghetto. When we told the owner about this he said" man up and get over it or quit but make sure you dont tell anyone else about this" along with recruiting and teaching and training and illegal solicitation, it was also our jobs as leaders to always giveoff the apperance that this was a great company that
everyone loved
Here were our hours: monday throught fri 7 am to about 8 pm
sat 9am to about 6 pm
optional sunday that wasnt really optional
And as for the worst term you can think of: extra mile, the deffinition of extra mile was to go out on your own after work and try and sell more of this garbage
I hope this helps shine alight on this illegal scam company i will post part 2 another day beacause my fingers hurt
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