Sneaky Recruiting Tactics
Written by The Scribbler
I used to work with a bubbly, perky 20-something in our church nursery. She and I laughed together, chit-chatted together, and I thought it could be the beginnings of a terrific friendship. She invited me out for coffee and said she wanted to get to know me better. “How nice!” I thought.
But in the back of my brain I recalled that she was into MK. When I met this gal for coffee, she was decked out in full MK regalia, right down to the shiny black high heels and fashionably tied pink scarf, her bag o’ tricks spread out on the table in front of her.
I sat down, and as I was about to engage in the type of conversation that one would when getting to know a friend, she whips out the Starter Kit Pamphlets.
“Are there any questions you have about Mary Kay?” she chirps with a grin that would rival that of the Joker.
I’m irritated by this, because clearly this whole cafe meeting isn’t about making a new friend after all. I feel betrayed. On the upside of all this, I’ve done my homework, so I figure I’ll see if she faithfully follows her script. Heck, she paid for my java, so I might as well enjoy it.
“I got a question. Doesn’t it bother you to know that in order to reach NSD (her ultimate goal, big shocker there), you have to recruit people along the way?”
She looks at me as if I’d just turned into Satan. “I don’t recruit,” she said quickly.
“You’d have to or you wouldn’t be a Director now,” I replied. I recited the first three ranks of the MK hierarchy and the recruits required for each. “Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I could sleep at night knowing my ultimate success depended on pulling other people in with me. I mean, what if you’re throwing someone else’s true life dream off course by yanking them into Mary Kay?”
She stared at me a long time before her phone rattled the silence. She quickly accepted the call, covered the receiver, and mouthed to me, “Thanks for coming!”
I left the pamphlets in the same stack she’d arranged them in. Man, talk about an abrupt send-off; you’d think I had the flesh-eating bacteria or something.
Now given all that, when I worked with this lass in the nursery this Sunday, she was NOT the same bubbly, cheery girl she was before I’d gone to coffee with her. She was quite distant, forcing a laugh here and there but for the most part, keeping her distance and not looking me in the eye much. Something was verrry different and for me, it hurt.
Anybody else had that happen to them… had a person in your life you thought was a friend but once the MK Pesticide was introduced (and you told them you weren’t interested/challenged the system) they promptly tossed you aside like a freshly-filled diaper? If so, how did you handle it, or did you handle it at all? Maybe this gal is mad because I called her out on her pink lies, but still, it is a terrible shame to see this happen.
In the years following this encounter, the gal divorced her husband, turned down my invites to her for casual lunches (she would cite “work” as the reason; yay for family/friends second and career third!) and lost her directorship not once, but TWICE. Her mother was also in Mary Kay and was sitting at Senior Sales Director for quite some time, but then got demoted down to entry-level Sales Director (SD). Sounds like the family needs to brush up on their recruiting tactics.
Visit the
She says she doesn’t recruit, even as she’s trying to recruit you 😵💫
Scribbler, I can relate. My husband and I were ditched by church friends who tried to recruit us into Amway. They were not the first to attempt to do so.Though we lost touch, I’m almost positive they’re no longer in. Fortunately the church we’re in now frowns on solicitation among its members.
I have challenged a number MLMers over the years. They all go ballistic when challenged. When invited to lunch (no mention of a sales pitch) by what turned out to be a Quixtar dude, I told him I would give him 60 minutes if he promised to give me 60 minutes later. He agreed to it.
I created a spreadsheet forecasting model of what it would take in Amway/Quixtar to meet whatever revenue goals were entered. He told me I was crazy and/or possessed, even though the model was created using Amway/Quixtar’s own compensation plan, and exactly matched their own numbers.
I challenged a Jamberry consultant at our church. She gave me the stink-eye every time I saw her after that. She and her husband made sure to switch to a different service time on Sunday to avoid seeing me. She also unfriended me on Facebook. Her husband evwn called and chewed me out for daring to challenge his wife, and insisted I never mention Jamberry to them again. They eventually moved to another church.
In the early 90s I challenged an Amway couple who were recruiting using the church directory (this was before the internet). I told them I would report them to our senior pastor if they didn’t knock it off. They told me I was Satan’s partner, and they left the church.
Once they’ve been “taken in” by the MLM pitch, nothing you say can get them out. They need to see it for themselves. By then the damage is done.
Only the Quixtar guy ever reached out to me later. After about 5 years, he contacted me to tell me I was right about Quixtar. He was the only one who had enough self esteem to admit his mistake. I don’t know what ever happened to the rest, but I can be sure none of them ever made any money at MLMing.
So sad.
Two years out of high school, I got a call from a guy in my class. He said it would be nice to get together and asked me to meet him for “pizza and a beer.”
I met him at the restaurant. He immediately launched into an Amway pitch. My heart sank. I listened politely and told him I was happy with my job at (________ corporation) and kept trying to change the subject. I asked about his college life, etc., to no avail.
He became extremely angry…frustrated…red-faced…sweating profusely. It was bizarre.
The last I heard was that he was a janitor at a rural school district in central Pennsylvania.
It was 50+ years ago, but I still think about it.
There is something so icky about you thinking you’re meeting up for a social event, and it turns out it’s a a sales pitch. Although the becoming angry, red-faced is new to me. I had a former college roommate tell me she was in my town (also the town she grew up in) to promote her AdvoCare business. (I declined going to the big group presentation about AdvoCare) And she asked did we want to meet for coffee and catch up? Sure; it’d be great to catch up. (I realized there’d be a sales pitch, but didn’t think it’d be the priority of the meet-up.) After a little
catching up chit- chat, she said “OK, should we get started?” That one sentence made me realize she didn’t really care about me or my life, but I was solely a way to grow her business. (She wasn’t a great friend to me or roommate so I wasn’t too upset to lose touch with her.)
That was apparent when I told her Dh’s hobby: ultramarathoning (& I am his cheerleader) & she didn’t ask a thing about races, how he got started, etc. Just tied it back to how he could use that hobby to sell AdvoCare to other runners. Girl, at least pretend to be interested.
MLMs tore through my young-moms group in the early 2000s. The only invitations I got were to home parties to sell stuff. I didn’t quite understand MLMs then, but I did realize that it had become very expensive for me to get together with other women. I called them “paying parties” and eventually stuck to the policy of declining all such invitations. I still resent how MLMs derailed my attempts to make friends and find a community.
Years ago, when I was young and cute, I ran into a former work acquaintance at a bar and he asked me on (what I thought was) a date. The day prior, he called to confirm the time and said that we would be stopping by a meeting of his new work colleagues for me to meet his “mentor,” whom had “changed his life.” He said that he couldn’t wait for me to meet these people and to hear what I thought of them, although he still had yet to tell me what he actually did. He gushed on and on and I told him that it sounded like a cult and I would not be going. No surprise, he wasn’t happy with that decision. I didn’t really know about MLMs at the time, but thank goodness I dodged that pyramid shaped bullet. I was pretty miffed and my pride was a bit hurt – what kind of creep asks a girl out to recruit her for their MLM?!