this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Years ago I was approached by a guy in a suit while working my shitty retail job. He was trying to recruit me to a pyramid scheme. I knew what was going on from the get go and just wanted to do a morbid curiosity suicide burn on it. Met him for an "interview" at a Starbucks and gave me like 10 CDs with talks from their independent business owners(lol) talking about how great it is and how much money they are making. He later invited me to a meeting at a hotel where they had a guy give a speech about the schtick in the conference hall with interviews played on a projector of success stories in tropical mansions.
I felt like, but don't know, that I might have been the only person there who knew what was going on. I talked to a few people who were also being recruited and they didnt seem to see what was going on. There were a lot of people there that really drank the Kool aid and had their dreams of not living paycheck to paycheck taken advantage of.
The guy who recruited me sat down with his wife, myself and another recruit and wanted to get us all signed up. I told him I didn't want to join a pyramid scheme. He tried to explain to me how it wasn't a pyramid scheme. I "wanted to get things straight" and drew a diagram on a napkin of the company structure, he confirmed my understanding was correct, I drew a triangle around it. The other recruit figured it out. The guy was trying to make me feel bad about not understanding how big of an opportunity I was throwing away, it did not work.
All the products they sold were crap. I looked at their website and couldn't find fuckall that I or anyone would actually want to buy if they weren't compelled to by being involved.
If you ever get someone trying to get you to do a pyramid scheme and they have one of those conference hall talks, do it if it is free just so you can enjoy the spectacle of con-men working in the open.
I remember seeing one of those and thinking about how overpriced everything was. It didn't seem high quality, and even if it was, I don't think I'd have wanted to pay anywhere near those prices.
I tried the draw the triangle around it trick with a coworker who was getting sucked into LuLaRoe.
They 180ed that shit and drew the CEO, his direct reports, the next layer and was like... "How is this not the same. All companies are in a pyramid"
That's when I just let it go and let her get scammed.