You Can’t Be Serious

A few days ago I mentioned my experiences with MLM recruiting during the last few economic crises, but in rechecking that post I see I’ve left out the best story of all; the company whose very concept was so stupid that it bears repeating. I’m going to ask you all to believe that this story is true, but I won’t be offended if you find this too much to accept. I almost couldn’t believe it was happening at the time, and I was there…

In the last years of the previous century, I was looking for work (yes, again!) in Los Angeles, and another sales/management ad caught my eye. I knew that most of these were low-percentage possibilities, but I didn’t feel I had much to lose by checking them out. So I called in for an appointment, sent them my resume, and eventually found myself driving to Westchester, near LAX, to meet with people about a fascinating opportunity in the travel industry – or so they assured me it was…

On arrival, I knew almost at once that the whole thing was a bust – there were two other people in the waiting room, and we were going to be going through the “first round” interview as a group. This isn’t always an indicator that your potential “employer” is going to try to fleece you like a flock of sheep, but it’s not a good sign. My already dubious view of the proceedings took a definite nosedive when we were ushered into the “interview room” and found enough seats for forty or fifty people, in rows facing forward. But I didn’t have anything else to do that afternoon, so I waited to hear the pitch. In a sense, I’m glad I did; this isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a few good laughs out of this story…

It turns out that this company’s “business opportunity” was that they would teach you how to be a travel agent. They didn’t offer classes in any of the relevant topics, however; you could get those from the local community college for under $100 at the time anyway. No, what they were offering was a series of audio tapes that would teach you how to be a travel agent. Once you completed the course of tapes, you would be given the right to fax orders into their headquarters, where their agents would handle the rest of the process. For the tapes (and the right to give them lucrative travel bookings) they required a mere $800. If you wanted the deluxe course, they would sell you the same information on VHS tape, along with demonstrations of how to dress, talk, act and sell products like a genuine travel agent, all for only $2,300 – and back then, that was a lot of money…

But the truly over-the-top part was the ID card. As part of either taped lesson package, you would also receive a plastic identification card with your name and the words “Travel Agent” embossed on it. The “interviewer” claimed that you could use this card to obtain the “special secret industry discounts” that allowed actual travel agents to travel the world First Class for effectively no money. He suggested that even if we never made a sale (and received our insultingly tiny cut of the proceeds) for their company, the card was still going to be worth more to us, in the long run, than the tape set (which was more money than my rent) or even the VHS tapes (nearly 4 times my rent)…

I’m not really sure how naïve you’d have to be to believe there was any such thing as “special secret industry discounts” in the first place, or how much more simple-minded you’d have to be to believe that all you would need to access such things was an embossed card that said “Travel Agent” in friendly gold letters. But apparently there were people that naïve in Los Angeles at the time, because I read a story in the paper about the folks behind this particular scam being prosecuted for fraud less than a year later, and they had apparently managed to bilk enough people to actually generate some public outcry. I’m also not sure where these people were on that day in grammar school when they taught us that something that sounds too good to be true usually ISN’T true…

The really sad thing about this whole scenario is that wasn’t actually the worst scam “business opportunity” I’ve ever stumbled across. But that’s a story for another day…