Do yourself a favor...
and don't EVER apply for a job on any one of the job find websites out there found under the SALES heading in which the company's name begins with the letter that follows G in the alphabet.(for a hint as to the name of the company, think of the 1937 movie by Frank Capra)Trust me, don't do it. It's a waste of time.
In the ad,they make it sound like it is an outside sales position that provides a person with a company car, professional atmosphere and some serious paychecks weekly, which are earned by selling high quality foodstuffs to pre-screened in-home customers and businesses. Sounds, pretty good, huh,selling to maybe restaurants, or institutional customers along with some in-home customers that have previously expressed an interest in the product? You think? Ummm..no. Not so. How do I know? I know because I answered the ad for this job a little over two years ago, and actually went on an 'interview' with them. The interview consisted of my speaking with an overly aggressive sales manager for a rather short period of time, who basically asked me a smattering of the usual questions(why does this job interest you? why are you looking to leave your current job? blahblah),gave a not too detailed overview of the job while pressuring me to go on 'ride with' with one of their experienced reps, to see if it would be a good fit for me. I wasn't overly impressed with the interview OR the interviewer, but as I was at the time desperate to leave the crummy job that I had, I agreed to go on the 'ride with'. I wasn't feeling overly optimistic, but figured, what the heck, you don't know till you try, right?So I show up for the 'ride with' dressed in business casual clothing( as that was what I was told to wear), day planner in hand to take notes, cell phone on stun, and ready to hopefully find a job that would be 'the one.' After meeting the rest of the employees during a short motivational meeting meant to pump them up and discuss the day ahead, I met with the guy I was to ride around with. Nice enough guy, polite, but dressed in denim shorts and a sloppy shirt, and rather ratty looking sneakers.THIS was business casual?? That's when my first red flag went up, but seeing as I was trying to keep my jaded side at bay,( and I really, really wanted to be out of the job from hell I was in) I let the sloppy attire go, and went around to the back of the building to join him in his company vehicle. Not a Verc rental type Ford compact or anything close to it, but a dumpy looking older model white pickup with the company logo emblazoned on the sides, and a freezer where the bare bed would be.Ok, so this job entails actually bringing the gourmet food WITH you and selling it, door to door to homeowners and businesses, I ask? Yeah, says sloppily dressed nice enough guy; it's easy!, he informs me,the repeat business is awesome, and the food really sells itself. The right sales rep, I am told, can make some serious cash weekly.And I'm thinking, cash as in a paycheck, right? So I ask if the reps are paid their checks weekly or is it bi-weekly, and oh, there aren't checks, it's a cash daily thing. Cash. The type of situation where you have to keep damn good records of all that you make, so that at tax time, you fill out the 10-whatever form, and..you see where it's going. At this point, I am feeling pretty deflated; this is NOT what I thought it would be, what I was TOLD it would be,and I was starting to feel like I was being snookered. BUT, being the optimist that I can be at times( or the desperate for a different job fool which was more like it!), I figured that I'd go on this 'ride with', MAYBE be proven wrong about the whole thing, and hey, maybe decide that it's not as bad as I was envisioning it to be.
RIIIGGGHHHHTTTT.
To encapsulate the rest of the day...
~the truck reeked of dirty feet, and was a total dump
~turns out this guy's route is deepinahearta Rhode Island, not exactly down the street from the South Shore of Ma.
~I was told over and over how much this guy raked in, how much 'stuff' he bought with his wicked big earnings..it was made to sound like every day was big money day!
~the cold calls we seemed to go on were obviously pre-planned; I mean, who would really drop $500.00 for food that's sold out of the back of a dumpy looking pickup without giving it some thought, or researching the company, or even asking for a damn ID from the rep!In all fairness, there has to be some people who do, as this company is still in business, but there is no way it was done that easily! I mean, one transaction barely lasted 15 minutes!
~ this guy had to make a personal stop halfway through the day, that was going to take, oh, ten minutes TOPS. I was lefting sitting in the hot stinky truck for 38 minutes while this moron did ...whatever! Not even a blast from the a/c with the window wide open could dispel that awful smell! Wow, how professional!
~ I was told during the ride back to the office/warehouse/whatever you want to call it that I needed to make a decison NOW, that this position was top rate, that there were many people after it, and that if I wanted it, I needed to let them know NOW. Talk about no pressure, huh? No reputable company, IMHO, pressures a prospective employee like that!I told the nice enough but now kinda annoying guy that I couldn't decide NOW, that I needed to think about it.Was I going to take it? Hell, no!, but I figured that I wasn't going to be pressured, and be professional about it, and give them my answer the next day.Why I decided this, I don't know ( I have been known to have bouts of DUHH-NESS like this from time to time), but that was what I was going to do, their pressure tactics be damned! So the very annoying and not as nice enough as I thought guy says that he will give to me a list of very important things to memorise for the job, and that I should be ready to recite these earth shattering facts the next day when I call them back.Yeah, ok. So he drops me off, I thank him for his time, and I get out of the truck. And he drives off, no paper that contains the secrets of this vast food empire for me to look at, nothing. What a flipping joke. I was really pissed at first, then the more I thought about it, I realised that I just needed to file the experience in two places; in the Lessons Learned file and the Don't Be So Dense Next Time! file. I swear it took 3 days for me to get that damn dirty feet stench out of my nostrils; BLECH!!
Oh,and the topper of the whole story? The next day I broke out into a mysterious, very itchy rash that lodged itself between every finger and half way up each arm and took half a week to get rid of, thanks to some antibiotics and lots of Aloe Vera.
Job seeker, BEWARE!
In the ad,they make it sound like it is an outside sales position that provides a person with a company car, professional atmosphere and some serious paychecks weekly, which are earned by selling high quality foodstuffs to pre-screened in-home customers and businesses. Sounds, pretty good, huh,selling to maybe restaurants, or institutional customers along with some in-home customers that have previously expressed an interest in the product? You think? Ummm..no. Not so. How do I know? I know because I answered the ad for this job a little over two years ago, and actually went on an 'interview' with them. The interview consisted of my speaking with an overly aggressive sales manager for a rather short period of time, who basically asked me a smattering of the usual questions(why does this job interest you? why are you looking to leave your current job? blahblah),gave a not too detailed overview of the job while pressuring me to go on 'ride with' with one of their experienced reps, to see if it would be a good fit for me. I wasn't overly impressed with the interview OR the interviewer, but as I was at the time desperate to leave the crummy job that I had, I agreed to go on the 'ride with'. I wasn't feeling overly optimistic, but figured, what the heck, you don't know till you try, right?So I show up for the 'ride with' dressed in business casual clothing( as that was what I was told to wear), day planner in hand to take notes, cell phone on stun, and ready to hopefully find a job that would be 'the one.' After meeting the rest of the employees during a short motivational meeting meant to pump them up and discuss the day ahead, I met with the guy I was to ride around with. Nice enough guy, polite, but dressed in denim shorts and a sloppy shirt, and rather ratty looking sneakers.THIS was business casual?? That's when my first red flag went up, but seeing as I was trying to keep my jaded side at bay,( and I really, really wanted to be out of the job from hell I was in) I let the sloppy attire go, and went around to the back of the building to join him in his company vehicle. Not a Verc rental type Ford compact or anything close to it, but a dumpy looking older model white pickup with the company logo emblazoned on the sides, and a freezer where the bare bed would be.Ok, so this job entails actually bringing the gourmet food WITH you and selling it, door to door to homeowners and businesses, I ask? Yeah, says sloppily dressed nice enough guy; it's easy!, he informs me,the repeat business is awesome, and the food really sells itself. The right sales rep, I am told, can make some serious cash weekly.And I'm thinking, cash as in a paycheck, right? So I ask if the reps are paid their checks weekly or is it bi-weekly, and oh, there aren't checks, it's a cash daily thing. Cash. The type of situation where you have to keep damn good records of all that you make, so that at tax time, you fill out the 10-whatever form, and..you see where it's going. At this point, I am feeling pretty deflated; this is NOT what I thought it would be, what I was TOLD it would be,and I was starting to feel like I was being snookered. BUT, being the optimist that I can be at times( or the desperate for a different job fool which was more like it!), I figured that I'd go on this 'ride with', MAYBE be proven wrong about the whole thing, and hey, maybe decide that it's not as bad as I was envisioning it to be.
RIIIGGGHHHHTTTT.
To encapsulate the rest of the day...
~the truck reeked of dirty feet, and was a total dump
~turns out this guy's route is deepinahearta Rhode Island, not exactly down the street from the South Shore of Ma.
~I was told over and over how much this guy raked in, how much 'stuff' he bought with his wicked big earnings..it was made to sound like every day was big money day!
~the cold calls we seemed to go on were obviously pre-planned; I mean, who would really drop $500.00 for food that's sold out of the back of a dumpy looking pickup without giving it some thought, or researching the company, or even asking for a damn ID from the rep!In all fairness, there has to be some people who do, as this company is still in business, but there is no way it was done that easily! I mean, one transaction barely lasted 15 minutes!
~ this guy had to make a personal stop halfway through the day, that was going to take, oh, ten minutes TOPS. I was lefting sitting in the hot stinky truck for 38 minutes while this moron did ...whatever! Not even a blast from the a/c with the window wide open could dispel that awful smell! Wow, how professional!
~ I was told during the ride back to the office/warehouse/whatever you want to call it that I needed to make a decison NOW, that this position was top rate, that there were many people after it, and that if I wanted it, I needed to let them know NOW. Talk about no pressure, huh? No reputable company, IMHO, pressures a prospective employee like that!I told the nice enough but now kinda annoying guy that I couldn't decide NOW, that I needed to think about it.Was I going to take it? Hell, no!, but I figured that I wasn't going to be pressured, and be professional about it, and give them my answer the next day.Why I decided this, I don't know ( I have been known to have bouts of DUHH-NESS like this from time to time), but that was what I was going to do, their pressure tactics be damned! So the very annoying and not as nice enough as I thought guy says that he will give to me a list of very important things to memorise for the job, and that I should be ready to recite these earth shattering facts the next day when I call them back.Yeah, ok. So he drops me off, I thank him for his time, and I get out of the truck. And he drives off, no paper that contains the secrets of this vast food empire for me to look at, nothing. What a flipping joke. I was really pissed at first, then the more I thought about it, I realised that I just needed to file the experience in two places; in the Lessons Learned file and the Don't Be So Dense Next Time! file. I swear it took 3 days for me to get that damn dirty feet stench out of my nostrils; BLECH!!
Oh,and the topper of the whole story? The next day I broke out into a mysterious, very itchy rash that lodged itself between every finger and half way up each arm and took half a week to get rid of, thanks to some antibiotics and lots of Aloe Vera.
Job seeker, BEWARE!
posted by Christine at 9:35 PM
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