Have you ever had a job or gone for an interview at a workplace you realised was a scam? What tipped you off? When did you get out of it?
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I spent 1 hour of unpaid work experience for a telephone provider. I found out on the day that I would be handing out pamphlets in a supermarket.
The person who was supposed to be helping and/or supervising just gave me the pamphlets and walked off to chat with his girlfriend. The only time he intervened was to tell me off for answering a potential customer’s question. I knew the answer, but I was supposed to defer to him (not that he told me beforehand) so that he could sugar coat (read - lie about) the answer.
I never went back, and tell all my friends to avoid that company. I’ve since discovered that they also do many illegal things to get more money from their customers, but will suddenly comply if you know your rights so that they never get caught.
I had a very similar experience. I went for an interview doing what I thought was going to be a call centre job, only to arrive at a supermarket where some shady guy was trying to convince me to hand out pamphlets. It was only my second or third interview ever and even then I knew that it was some sort of scam.
What was the company?
The might be a little too much personally identifying information if I mention them. I don’t want to risk it.
Understandable.
I was fresh out of college so was very susceptible to anyone calling for an interview invite. Got a call from a company I didn’t recognize and I was too innocent to not question how they even got my number. I dressed up and everything, brought my resume, etc. When I arrived, there was a bunch of us and then there was a presentation.
Yep, you guessed it, it was an MLM. It was the mid 2000s, so it wasn’t really well known as an MLM or pyramid scheme at the time. Hell, I couldn’t even understand why I was sitting through a presentation and not doing an interview. I realized it wasn’t a job when they started asking for money to commit. Barely 20 me still didn’t realize it’s a scam, but fortunately I literally had no money so couldn’t offer anything either way lol. After a lot of prodding, they finally let me go if I wrote down the names and number of 5 people I know. Then I realized that’s how they got my number. Someone in my circle went through the same thing and gave my contact info away.
I sold student loan forgiveness for about 2 weeks in my early 20s (circa 2010ish), the first of which was “training”. When I actually looked at the terms of the program and the associated interest rates, I told my buddy that got me in that he was a scumbag and walked right out.
I worked for a vanity publisher that would publish literally anything you sent to them. But you had to buy all of the books yourself. They did nothing to help promote your book. They would cold ship books to bookstores along with a bill, most either refused the shipments, or dumped them.
I did the layout for children’s books. And let me tell you, when I say they would publish anything I mean anything. There was a book about snails, but none of the “snails” had shells, and they all looked like penises. There were a couple kids science books that were factually incorrect. We were not allowed to correct or change anything.
When I was a kid I broke my arm. I thought I was a poet at the time and wrote a poem about the breakage, entitled “it’s shaped wrong.” My mom submitted it … Somewhere? … And it got accepted into a poetry book. She bought the book for, iirc, $50.
I’ve always felt vaguely ashamed about it. Even if I thought it was good at the time (it wasn’t), it was a four line poem, not nearly worth $50.
It would be kind of funny if it was the same company.
Way back I worked at a call center for “Explore Talent”. We were located in Oregon but had to tell everyone we were in LA. They even had the LA weather forecast written on the board so we could comment on the weather. Super slimy job taking advantage of desperate people giving them false hope for money. I didn’t last the month.
I can kind of get the logic behind this if you were an overseas call center. If you’re already based in the US, why lie? I can’t imagine why a call center would think being located in CA instead of OR would make the slightest difference.
You can’t fathom why claiming LA for a talent agency would legitimize more than Orgun? 🤔
Thafuq.
edit: nm. username checks out.
In my early 20s while working a shit retail job, I was approached by a Ukrainian man in a cheap suit that was trying to recruit me for a marketing and sales job. I come from some money, so I know a nice suit when I see one; his suit was not terrible, but it wasn’t tailored/bespoke. So I knew he was trying to convey success, but was not successful.
We met at a Starbucks and talked about the work vaguely, he handed me some CDs that were speeches given by higher ups in the company. He also gave me a website to look at the products they offer and a sample of the caffeine-free “energy” drink they sold. It sounded off and I already knew it was part of a scam of some sort. We parted ways and I gave them a listen. The drink was about a generic and unremarkable health drink that included every buzzword of the 2010s healthy energy drink alternatives that never seemed to make it out of the first half of that decade.
The speeches were about success and business stuff. Very much screamed grifter motivational stuff that said nothing about the business.
He wanted to meet again and get my thoughts. He had not asked for money, he had not presented me with a contract or anything, so I wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole went. He described the job as being an independent business owner in direct digital marketing(giant red flag terms). He invited me to a “business meeting” at a hotel where I would learn more.
I showed up and I saw a lot of people in cheap suits, maybe a half dozen were in tailed suits and designer dresses. It was a hotel convention hall with a few hundred in the audience, the majority of which looked like they were grabbed from a low-paying job like me and the gas station worker that was also invited by the same guy as me.
There were a few speeches and a few explainations of the business structure and how you make more money. There was a lot of talking about how successful they were, how much their life changed, and how great their lives became. It was a pyramid scheme, a legal one, but just barely.
After, the guy I was talking to and his wife sat down with the other guy he invited and myself to chat about the next step. Dude tried really hard to hype everything up and convey excitement while he pitched the deal to us. He made the mistake of asking me what I thought after asking the other guy, who was excited. I told him that it was a pyramid scheme. The suit acted dumb and didn’t understand what a pyramid scheme was. I borrowed a pen and drew a diagram on a napkin of the “business structure”. He continued to play dumb and defended it, claiming that it is his business and it is legitimate. He humble bragged about buying his car in cash(a Chrysler 300) and how him and his wife are doing really well while the ticking Rolex told me how well he was actually doing. (If you didn’t know, a real Rolex second hand does not tick, it glides.)
I had obviously crushed the other invitee’s dreams of having a mansion, a luxury car, and vacations to tropical beaches with a trophy wife. At least I hope I did and he went on to live a modest life of joyous contention with mediocrity instead of chasing a lie that would require roping in anyone foolish enough to fall for the scam.
We concluded the conversation and I ghosted him, keeping like 6 of his CDs lol. I honestly don’t remember the name of the company. I think it was an Amway derivative, but I might be misremembering.
Why, are you planning to set something up?
I interviewed for one. It’s was an “electric company” which offered people a “better rate” on their bills. It was a variable rate that wasn’t guaranteed to ever be lower overall.
You mean besides, um… checks notes Oh, pretty much anything in this timeline?
