Submitted by asterism in AsterismOvershares (edited )

One of my coworkers has recently joined an MLM. The kind where you leverage social pressure to guilt people into attending "parties" (a sales pitch) and then further guilt them into buying your expensive useless shit. This particular MLM is some sort of line of "green" cleaning products with reusable bottles and what not.

Well she starts trying to pressure my one coworker (who she is like legitimately best friends with) into buying her shit and is trying to make her feel guilty for not attending her "party" that she had over the weekend. It was kind of shitty and the receiving coworker was clearly annoyed by it (though ultimately caved and bought stuff by the end of the day).

I also had to hear over and over about how she wished she had butter with her so she could smear it on the windows and show us how great this product was at cleaning.

Anyway my coworker puts one of her catalogs in the break room. Its a typical catalog, looks like a small magazine. On it she has a sticky note saying to see her if anyone is interested in buying anything. and because I have an obvious hatred for MLMs and because my coworker was annoying me with the sales pitches. I grabbed the magazine. I had to make a brief trip over to the other building so instead of just putting it in the nearest trash I decided I would walk over to that building and place it into the recycling over there. I figured ultimately that this didn't matter much, surely my coworker has many such catalogs. But it sort of felt cathartic and petty so I was glad I did it.

Well hours later she realizes its gone and she is clearly very very upset. She starts looking in all the trash cans (in our building) trying to find it. She's interviewing my coworkers about when they last saw it. She's sending messages out to the staff to inquire if they have it. and she is clearly rattled, ticked off even. She was certainly rather crabby for the rest of the day. She was also very restless getting up periodically to search for her lost catalog. She remarked that, "I am an only child I can't stand it when someone takes my toys". I found this humorous because she must be in her 50s and she is admittedly having a tantrum over a magazine.

Anyway I view that endeavor as a success. lol.

11

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

wednesday wrote

omg this reminds me of one of the worst things that ever happened to me:

i used to be on Facebook (yes i know, shut up) and one of my coworkers at the time joined some sort of cosmetics MLM, and she added every woman at the company to her new MLM group, including me. now, i almost never wear makeup, and i'm certainly never going to buy from some shitty scam company, so i had no interest at all in this group. but this woman was really nice and friendly and we got on pretty well, so i felt like i couldn't leave the group because it would be rude, and then there might be the sort of social awkwardness that i do everything i possibly can to avoid.

so from that day until i finally quit Facebook, i had to constantly see all these stupid posts about some stupid MLM that i hated, and there was nothing i could do to stop it. and that's the reason i now have a fiery hatred for all MLM nonsense.

5

asterism OP wrote

Yeah as soon as someone joins an MLM they go on my "List of Annoying People" and there is no redemption for them and they deserve whatever rudeness I can muster. Which admittedly is mostly petty shit.

Because manipulating people with friendship is shitty imo.

2

wednesday wrote (edited )

i wish i could do that, but i'm so desperate for the approval of other people and the fleeting sense of connection with another inhabitant of this doomed circus we call "reality" that i'm almost entirely incapable of being rude to or even disapproving of other people.

... i'm not even sure if this is sarcasm or just honesty. but i love your praxis and i hope you can throw more MLM shit in the bin in the future.

edit: as someone else pointed out, this applies equally to MLM as either a marketing scam or a Marxism.

2

lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

talk to me, so we can be friends. That sounds like a way more enjoyable experience than trying to appease normies to like you.

2

asterism OP wrote

Lol, you scare me.

3

lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

I don't understand? Does my comment sound scary? Or am I scary to talk to? Because I can understand me being scary to talk to lol

3

asterism OP wrote (edited )

I was joking but I cant think of a way to explain it that sounds funny.

You arent any more scary than normal imo.

2

wednesday wrote

i don't think you're scary but for some reason i thought you didn't like me. i like reading what you write though. even if i don't agree with it, it makes me think about why i don't, which is really pretty unusual nowadays.

should i join that voice chat thing y'all are doing?

2

lettuceLeafer wrote

Oh, I'm pretty ambivalent about you. I don't think I've ever disliked you. But I disliked plenty of people and changed my mind. I'm not very rigid about that kinda thing. I'm glad u like my stuff.

U have to ask ass man, the one who talks too much. But I'm down to talk to most people just one on one. So if u wanna just voice chat I I can prob find a good time to do in on your schedule. I use jitsi so I just give u a link

1

roanoke9 wrote

Good work Asterism. I had a brief MLM phase, a month or two in the 90s : knew it was culty though, just needed money and was grasping at anything. My only consolation is that I never sold anything, never bought anything, they wasted more time and effort on me than I did on them. Not purposely though, I just do real bad at things that I can't fully get behind. The couple who sponsered me in fronted me the start up products and junk, so it was a net loss to them and I learned some lessons about scams that usually cost others a lot more time and money. Now I just cringe when I see people go all in on those things.

2