Sorry i can’t think of a better title lol.
Anyways, exams are over (and that’s old news since it was over on the 4th May). Been bumming around, and going out etc. etc. but I wanted to get a job. Since my FYP only begins in early july.
So a few days ago I was browsing an online blog filled with job adverts, and decided to respond to one that said “MD-S Sales for 2 weeks required. $800 for 2 weeks. queenstown area” (MD-S is a famous private university in singapore)
Thinking MD-S is quite trustworthy I decided to call them up and we arranged for an interview today afternoon, not at queenstown, to my surprise, but at a certain area in the east.
When i went today, then I realised there are so many things wrong with the advert. The most obvious one is that it has NO RELATIONS with MD-S whatsoever, apart from the building name bearing the logo of MD-S. The moment I entered the company name changed and instead of students I see smartly dressed young people walking around, talking excitedly. Apparently they expected me (and a couple of others) since the interview is roughly the same time so we could all go for a combined meeting.
So here’s the deal about this “company”
1) It is NOT MD-S at all, but a sales (almost MLM-ish) company
2) It deals with new-agey products like a)magnetic therapeutic … balls(?) or something, b)some special toothpaste that is better than the ones in the market, c) “healthy” water (i.e. hard water), d)moisturizer that is so “non-toxic that it can be eaten”, and e)air purifiers.
3) It works like the following: You start off as a salesman, following leaders around to sell their products. On average you can clinch a deal that earns you about $400 a week. ON AVERAGE. THAT’S NOT WHAT THE AD SAID. And it definitely isn’t a 2-week job. What cheaters!
Anyway, yea, then, if you can recruit 3 friends into your “team”, you will be promoted to some Executive position. And you get 10% cut or something, from the sales your teammates made. And if your teammates each also recruit 3 friends, they will be promoted to that Executive position, while you are promoted to I dunno some Manager position. And if you fulfil some more stuff you ‘ll be promoted to an even better sounding Manager position etc. etc.
The cycle continues until a certain rank, then if you fulfil some quota of sales per week, you receive some rebates or benefits for you to buy a car. And apparently you can also join the exclusive club, called COC which stands for (C-r Own-rs Cl-b) YES THAT’S THE REAL NAME. where you can go for weekend retreats with fellow colleagues and bosses who also own cars.
4) There is a hall of fame, with all the managers names, all of them are pretty young, many of them even younger than me. And they all have cars and I think the car model names are beside their names lol, if I remember correctly.
Sounds MLM-ish right? But it isn’t! Because the good thing is we do not need to make ANY initial investment, meaning we don’t need to buy any of their products to join the company. I actually would have considered joining… at least be stuck at the bottom rank, just following and earning some money, if not for the horrendous sales pitch on the “water” that the company is advertising.
It is essentially hard water, but the company said it’s the only distributor in SEA. Apparently. And it even had scientific demonstrations to “prove” to us that the water is good for us. Here goes what I saw, truly eyebrow raising.
1) The company has supposedly utilized the latest technology to “make the water molecules smaller” and the benefits include better absorption (I think, I kind of drifted at this point in the meeting). Proof? They had two glasses of water, one ordinary, and one the hard water they’re marketing. After placing two tea bags, the hard water changed color very fast.
2) The hard water can protect our bodies. Proof? Two enclosed jars, containing a nail each. One jar was filled with normal water, another was filled with the hard water. The nail in the normal water rusted, while the one in the hard water didn’t. Because the calcium ions present prevented the rusting from taking place. SIMILARLY, the calcium will, to quote the speaker, “form a protective layer on our organs and prevent it from bacterial and viral attacks”
3) The hard water is alkaline which is good. Because Acid is bad for us and Alkaline is good for us. The ideal pH value in our blood is about a high 7 or low 8 which is slightly alkaline. (This much is true.) But because the food we eat is so acidic, the blood may have a tendency to drop in pH and then we may suffer from health disorders like cancer. Demonstration? Universal indicator dipped into normal water, shown that it is slightly acidic. Another indicator dipped into hard water, shown that it is slightly alkaline. HENCE the hard water is good! Another analogy. The world’s oldest man lived til the age of hundred and twenty. Research has shown that the water in that village has a very high pH, (almost ten) and the villagers there all live to at least 95 years old.
Forget the buffer system in our body works such that a slight change in pH like this is, to put it bluntly, totally useless. Forget the alkaline condition in our blood has already taken into account of the food we eat. Forget the fallacy on causality and consequence. Forget the fact that drinking too much hard water may be detrimental to our health.
4) The hard water has detoxification effects. Proof? 5 drops of iodine solution dropped into normal water and shaken, and the color is brown. 5 drops of iodine solution dropped into the hard water and shaken, and it’s decolorised. So the poisonous iodine has been “detoxified”! This is actually kind of disturbing. To decolorise the iodine mean a reducing agent must be present in the hard water. I’m curious as to what reducing agent they put in? Will it be harmful to us? Of course they will say no.
So this is the reason why I said no to the company. Firstly, the deception in the ads, then the MLM-like system, and now the fishy benefits brought up by the salesman. And he’s not a salesman, he’s apparently some manager. He has pointed out that we all need to have a high level of knowledge on the products we sell, and the company has fully qualified nutritionists to validate and teach us on the knowledge. But from the things he said, I question the credibility of the nutritionists. Not being snobbish in any way, but seriously. All the benefits that are mentioned above are really rubbish. I would have considered joining the company and be at the low rank until July, meaning just selling stuff and not recruiting new members. But the products turn me off. No way am I selling questionable items like these.
And finally, another fishy thing about the company is how it gets its clients. It has two kinds of clients, company clients and personal clients (I changed the word slightly) Company clients meaning they go to the company and pitch to them. Personal clients meaning people like you and I, and pitching to us. I have no idea how they source for personal clients (or even company clients for that matter). They say it’s not door-to-door sales, but when I asked, the first person said the manager will brief us more on the details, but the manager didn’t say anything. To give them credit, probably more will be told to us during the orientation program which I of course won’t be attending, but even if the method for personal client sourcing is an honest one, I can’t see how aggressively recruiting of new salesmen will not lead to market saturation, especially when the items we are selling are non-essential ones.
Now of all the negative things I said about this company, at least there is one good thing about it. The staff and managers are not half as condescending at the previous MLM people that I encountered. In fact when I told them I won’t be coming back anymore one manager even said she appreciated the fact that I stayed throughout the 2-hr session, as previously she had encountered rude people who would leave halfway during the meeting or people who just wanted to create a scene. Oh, and as incredulous as it sounds, the company is actually ISO certified , and I don’t think companies would lie about such stuff.
So now it’s back to being jobless and anticipating the release of inFamous for PS3. Haha.
