TheBanyanTree: Zeek Rewards as a Business Model?

[Monique Colver]

I worked for one of those places, back when I was a temp and taking
whatever Accountemps would throw at me. They threw me some pretty crappy
jobs too.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. A girl's gotta pay the bills,
right?

This particular place sold vacation plans. For the low sum of $9,999 you
could get . . . I don't know. I really don't know. But something really
cool! I was in the payroll department, and it was my job to calculate
commissions for the salespeople. It wasn't all that hard, but it could be
messy, since sometimes people would catch on that they'd been sold a bill
of goods, with no goods, and want their money back -- then I'd have to take
the commission back too.

Assuming the buyer got their money back. I imagine they made it pretty
difficult.

I was in the business office, naturally, and they had sales locations
throughout the Seattle area, one of which was right down the hall from the
business office. On presentation days the slimy salespeople would be in,
and wouldn't that be fun?

No, really, wouldn't it?

One day, during a presentation, one salesman thought another salesman was
trying to take his victim, and words were exchanged. Words weren't enough,
however, and someone threw a punch. This was right after a presentation,
when all the victims were being sold to. Someone punched back, and they
ended up in the hallway, punching at each other. The fight made its way
down the hallway, apparently with one of them running away from the other,
until they reached the end of the hallway and the door to the business
office. The first one came crashing through the door, yelling for someone
to lock the door after him.

He was a bit bloodied, and the salesman left on the outside of the door was
rather irate that he couldn't get to the first guy, who was now cowering in
the business office.

Cowering. I love that word.

Management eventually dispersed the belligerent parties and sent them home.

So strong was the company's stance on workplace violence that the next day
they were both back at work. As someone in management said, "Boys will be
boys!" That, and as long as they made sales, who cares? They could kill
each other as long as all the papers were signed first, no big.

One member of management was heard to say to another member of management,
"We have to really motivate these guys, it's really tough to sell air."

And that's exactly what they were selling.

My boss was a bitchy older lady, and her boss was the accounting manager.
One day someone said, "Come look at this!" And we all trooped over to look
in the accounting manager's top right pull out writing board, where he'd
taped a note that said, "Debits on the left, credits on the right."

We laughed. What else does one do about an accounting manager who can't
keep that straight without notes?

The company was under investigation a lot by the attorney general,
strangely. I know! You try to operate a business and this is what happens.
When the Seattle Times started covering it I contacted the reporter doing
the story and told him what I knew.

Yes. I was a whistleblower. Unfortunately I didn't know a lot, other than
the salespeople were making big commissions because if you charge someone
$9,999 for basically nothing, you've got a big margin to work with. I
wanted to warn all the prospective buyers that they'd be better off
stuffing their money under their mattress and pulling some out when they
wanted a vacation because I'm weird that way.

Fortunately I left there before my soul rotted away completely.




Monique Colver
An Uncommon Friendship: a memoir of love, mental illness, and friendship
Now available at
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Monique+Colver>
and
at www.AnUncommonFriendship.com <http://anuncommonfriendship.com/>
www.ColverPress.com
monique.colver at gmail.com
(425) 772-6218



> A few weeks later we got a follow=up call from the cruise club. She
> happened to answer the call, and it did a mom's heart good to hear that
> sweet child rip into the caller about his scummy outfit being immoral,
> unethical, lying, cheating, stealing candy from babies, no good rats.  It
> was well worth those couple of hours of our time to have her learn the
> lesson so well stated by Robert Heinlein:  TANSTAFL:  There ain't no such
> thing as a free lunch.
>
> Theta
>
>
>