Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Tell Us Your Amway/Quixtar Story
I have not encouraged the use of the comments sections of this blog. Here's a chance to use them. Tell us about your experience with Amway/Quixtar. This applies to whether you have been a distributor or not.

I'll start things off with my own Amway/Quixtar experiences
1) When I was in grad school, a woman from Uganda lived in my apartment building. She was walking in the building with a clean-cut looking young man. I later asked her who he was. She told me that he was offering a great business opportunity called Amway. I told her that it was a big mistake. I told her to research the company on the Internet. She did and she wanted nothing to them. She asked me to help give the guy the brush-off. She told him that she couldn't do Amway but that I was interested. I figured what the heck so I acted like a live one. He gave me the spiel and a tape by financial adviser John Sestina, probably the only financial planner who ever recommended Amway as a business opportunity(Sestina quote: "In Financial planning you trust no one; in Amway, you trust everyone." Yeah, right). When I got tired of the guy I told him flat out that I wasn't interested.

2) In 1998, I had an administrative job in an office with a bunch of gossipy mother hens. I didn't fit in to the office environment in a big way. One of the women in the office was in Amway. At unit meetings, she would weave into the conversation that she would be retiring in about 18 months due to Amway. When we had group lunches, she would take Amway vitamins and do a pitch about how they helped her. When I was given two weeks notice, she came up to me an offered me the Amway business opportunity. I ignored her. I checked her office website recently. Nine years later, she still works at the same office.

3) Once I was in the Columbus Public Library. I was walking in the hallway and a recent immigrant from Poland introduced himself and then asked me if I would like to do Amway. I told him I didn't want to do it. He moved on.

Tell us your Amway/Quixtar experiences.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the early 90s I graduated into a recession with an engineering degree. I followed another engineer to one of their meetings. I was jaded and wasn't all that impressed. I only went because she was smart and good looking. I didn't have the money to buy into it. She supposedly quit her job at (airplane mfg) to work with them full time.

I stopped talking to her 13 years ago after some crazy assertion that the founding fathers intended abortion to be illegal. This chick is probably a blood red state blogger now.

First time I heard of them being a right wing cult was on here. Considering the politics of that former friend I am not surprised.

Anonymous said...

Timeframe was 1996 or so, background I was early 40's, been working since I was 16 for a bunch of small companies as an etech but had totally burned out, walked from the last job (7 years but one of those _ at review time never failed to tell me what a shitty job I was doing and how I had done nothing but fuck things up and BTW, here's a $1/hour raise), tried to find a new career via schooling, different interviews (tech writing, tech desk) et al, but all I found was yet another way to make $5.00/hour. Married someone I later found to be schizo-affective... Then I met "Jim", a former exec who had a new electronic start-up, he hired me as his first employee. Although working with him was tough, especially when it was just me, it was okay. Later on we started to expand, add new employees. Then one day he hit me with the J O B speech, turned out his REAL occupation was AMWAY. (or so he claimed). Later I got the whole nine, including the rant against teacher unions and the Dale Carnegie book. He insisted that I receive the entire AMWAY presentation and yes, of course, he was in "Bunny" Yeager's upline so I needed the tapes and the worx including the "money tree" which he loudly announced a recent reward from at the last meeting. Even though he knew my at-that-time wife was mentally unstable, he (& his) insisted on giving me the full book so over he/they came. Fortunately my ex chose to sleep that evening so I put up with 3 hours of that crap, no real questions allowed, of course he left me with a bunch of cassettes for me to listen on loan at least. (Damn, in hindsight I should have rerecorded them with something different 1-2 minutes inside of the original program...) No, I did not bite, still do (and always will) that JOB thing, but that guy both scared the crap out of me and pissed me off big-time. RULE 1 - IF YOU ARE AMWAY, DON'T YOU DARE INFECT PEOPLE YOU HIRE FOR OTHER PURPOSES - you hired me for other duties, do not intimidate me by making me think I need to buy in to your upline.
Rule 2 - a really good way to piss off all the sales/marketing people you meet is to try & sell them on Amway
Rule 3 - that "far-right email hotline", keep it a secret from your liberal progressive opponents asshole, else we might just try & subvert your newly-laundered mind, comrade.

Must add - although I quit in 1998 and hadn't seen him since, in 2000 he blindly loaned me a $2500 digital scope which I used and promptly returned, the folks I was then working for gave me no budget at all yet needed a difficult digital communication problem solved. Jim may be yet another Amway Asshole but inside, he's a good egg and although tonight I am chiding him for intimidating me I must also thank him for trusting me although I did not disappoint, either. And btw, last time I looked, he still has his J.O.B.

Unknown said...

About 10 years ago, I worked at a Kinko's, where one of my responsibilities was taking business card orders. I got the impression then, that one of the first things you do when you join Amway was buy yourself 500 business cards, because we'd get one or two guys coming in per week.

About half of them would try to sell me on Amway. Here I am making $7/hour at some copy-shop, and they're telling me about the amazing potential of Amway. Except they're doing it at the same time they're trying to fight the $3 paste up charge for their logo.

Each one of them was a Biff Loman, or a Gil from the Simpsons. Each one was telling themselves, and the world, that they were gonna hit the big-time on this one. And yet, I was one of their prospective clients. That told me all I needed to know.

A couple a month would leave a dozen cards when they came to pick them up, and tell me to give them to my co-workers. You can guess where I threw them.