The Gaming Den

In the last ~year and a half, about since the time I started talking to someone from OKC who herself is a thicker woman, the women I draw have been transitioning from "you can floss with her" to roughly "brickhouse." It amuses me.

Ted the Flayer wrote:So, being demoted from my old position hasn't stopped one of the manager's from trying to force me to do my old job with reduced pay. She was not pleased when I refused.

Although I accidentally used a bronyism when talking to her. I said "I'm going to have to put my hoof down on this matter, I'm not doing my old job for less pay".

It could be construed as colorful language. I mean, "hoofing it" and "on the hoof" have been around for a while. Play it cool and she won't realize.

Parthenon wrote:

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I'm finding it interesting over here and enjoying myself, although that could be because I'm not working too hard in the heat. However, when guide books say that most people speak some English they are lying.

Really? I lived in Malaysia for a while. People spoke English well enough that I could play in Magic tournaments with no trouble whatsoever. Where are you?

And of course theres the squatting toilets with no toilet paper in public places like shopping centres.

The lack of toilet paper is annoying, but the squatting toilets are simply better than traditional Western toilets. They put your body in the position that you are supposed to be in while defecating.

Neeeek wrote: The lack of toilet paper is annoying, but the squatting toilets are simply better than traditional Western toilets. They put your body in the position that you are supposed to be in while defecating.

Quite. Westerners have all sorts of problems with their asses that no one else in the world have because we try to shit in an unnatural position. At home, I prop my legs up on a stool in the bathroom to get in a more natural position.

Parthenon wrote:Which was fresh because it had been soaked in formaldehyde. Actual formaldehyde, the stuff they preserve dead bodies in because nothing will go near it.

It's in a lot of foods anyway, especially soda, and has been forever. Talk to old navy guys, and they'll talk about their beer being full of the stuff (because its a preservative). I found one fact sheet online which says that processed meats are about 2% formaldehyde by weight.
Also, your body metabolizes distillation byproducts into formaldehyde anyway, so you're pretty much getting some no matter what any time you drink booze, no matter how careful you are otherwise.

The bad thing about it is that it's carcinogenic in rats they breathe it at all times, even in fairly low doses. The much less bad thing is that it's not at all when they eat it. I want to say that's because it's actually formalin which is cancer, but I'm not sure and don't care enough to keep researching.

TL;DR:
Some formaldehyde in food isn't shocking or scary.

So, I got a call from some company called Primerica asking me to come in for an interview this week. I think, sweet, having a resume up on Monster may have paid off. However, I've never heard of this company, and the person calling me is being pretty dodgy, referring to the position as a representative position, with no common language or "in other words" explanation, and says that it is a customer service position, but not what I'd be doing, saying that it'd be a bit difficult to explain over the phone.

Basically I figure better to accept and do research on my own, and beg out if I don't like it, than automatically decline, and possibly miss out on what could be a decent job.

Looking them up online, their website is similarly dodgy. Though I was able to find job descriptions for two positions with "Representative" in the name:

Field Service Rep wrote:The Customer Service Rep. 1 answers incoming calls from agents and responds to commission inquiries. Candidate possesses excellent telephone etiquette as well as excellent verbal and written communication skills. Excellent PC and math skills, as well as previous call center experience is desired. Performs multiple tasks and handles difficult callers. Monday-Friday 9a-6p.

Qualifications, Skills, and Abilities:
Minimum 1 year telephone Customer Service Representative is desired
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Ability to organize and present facts in a clear and concise manner in both speech and correspondence
Ability to work under pressure and communicate professionally with irate customers
Excellent PC Skills

Licensing Rep wrote:The Customer Service Rep 1 answers telephone and written inquiries from agents and Field Licensing Offices and performs research and solving problems as authorized.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS and ABILITIES
Bachelor degree or 4 years of work experience to include 3 years as a Customer Service Representative
Bi-lingual (Spanish and English) skills are required
2 years of job-related coursework at technical school will be considered instead of four year degree
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Ability to organize and present facts in a clear and concise manner in both speech and correspondence
Ability to work under pressure and communicate professionally with irate customers
Excellent PC skills

So... ok, I'm less dubious because it looks like a "let people call you, tell them what's going on, get an actual paycheck" thing rather than "call people, convince them to buy shit, get commissions that may not make up for the hours of work you put in."

I'm still dubious on the "I've never heard of them" count, and looking them up on wiki, they're apparently likened to a cult or scam.

So I'm drawing on the knowledge of the net, and specifically, the den, can any one tell me more about Primerica?

Edit: And I just called the person back. She said that all representative positions are the same position, and that "(I) don't have to call people" in a kind of "well, if you don't want to make any money..." tone. She dodged every single question I asked her, saying that she would go into in the interview on Friday, and only answered my question about the $99 licensing fee that I read about by saying that it wasn't a licensing fee, but a background fee, and defended their asking the potential employee to pay this amount by deflecting, saying that "(I'll) find most businesses have the employee pay for background these days, and in fact any university* would be charging a lot more" going on to say that because they pay for training and three licenses, and blah blah blah, that she felt it was pretty generous. She wouldn't say whether the pay was commission or paycheck. She deflected when asked about me having to pay them money. I'm thinking that, yeah, this is a scam.

Yeah, it's a scam. I've known enough people who worked for them who didn't get paid even once because they kept moving the goalposts around and refused pay based on that.

Also, don't use their services. Here's the Primerica way of investments:

Consolidate your debts. Pay more than the minimum due. Buy life insurance for some reason I'm not 100% sure of but I'm sure it's important.

There, Primerica in a nutshell.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting. I don't like commission based pay either, because unless I'm making something and then selling it, doing the work with no guarantee of pay is a balls-stupid way of trying to make money, in my opinion. Potential for goal post shifting aside...

No one will ever ask you to pay your background. Absolutely worse case they will take it out of your paycheck.

Never ever ever pay a background/licensing fee unless you are entering some kind of obvious high skill job and the license will be of value working for someone else.

IE: Paying for ABA membership is fine. Paying for Primerica licensing anything is not okay.

Yeah, pretty much. I'm now trying to decide between saying "fuck it" and going in on Friday to see if they have in fact changed/dick with them.

I got a similar call after submitting my resume to a career search website some months ago from a place that claimed to be hiring wellness coaches. I had hoped that this was a real thing, but instead it turned out to be a nutritional supplement sales pitch where they wanted us to buy their product and sell it for them. I walked out.

They have not changed, because if you wanted to transform from that into a respectable business you would set everything on fire and start over. You would not keep your name. And there's certainly not going to be any reliable evidence to gauge them by at the interview.

If they are asking for money from you for a bull-shit license or background, then it's just a flat-out scam and the only reason they dodged questions so hard on the phone was to get you in for the interview is so they can put you in a high-pressure situation and hope you will cave and throw money at them.

Don't bother, unless you don't get enough dealing with assholes here at the den.

Well, I do have an excellent defense against "Give us money." It's called "I don't have any."

DSMatticus wrote:They have not changed, because if you wanted to transform from that into a respectable business you would set everything on fire and start over. You would not keep your name. And there's certainly not going to be any reliable evidence to gauge them by at the interview.

Amway changed their name to Quickstar for a reason. Too much baggage associated with the name.

(Although, from what I understand, not much has changed other than focusing on online sales.)

DSMatticus wrote:If they are asking for money from you for a bull-shit license or background, then it's just a flat-out scam and the only reason they dodged questions so hard on the phone was to get you in for the interview is so they can put you in a high-pressure situation and hope you will cave and throw money at them.den.

Yeah. This.

I sold CutCo for a while, and they make you buy stuff up front. It was worthwhile, and everyone I ran into who already had it was super-enthusiastic and bought more.
The thing with that though was reading the fine print up front and realizing that it was not going to be worth it as an hourly thing (it paid commission if you got sales, and was great then). The up-front part of it seemed pretty sleazy, but it was hiding an actually decent business.

My brother sold CutCo too. He was kinda hard core, made an advertisement magnetic strip that he put on his car, yadda, yadda. I find that generally those sales jobs prey first on your family and friends and I would have felt way more comfortable convincing them to buy superior cutlery and scissors than a bullshit diet supplement.

fectin wrote:I sold CutCo for a while, and they make you buy stuff up front. It was worthwhile, and everyone I ran into who already had it was super-enthusiastic and bought more.
The thing with that though was reading the fine print up front and realizing that it was not going to be worth it as an hourly thing (it paid commission if you got sales, and was great then). The up-front part of it seemed pretty sleazy, but it was hiding an actually decent business.

Except people who want cutco, can get it from the HSN or Amazon for stupidly low prices.

On a cursory glance at Amazon, my scissors are still $100. And worth every penny.

My last job interview was with CutCo. I did not get the job. When I saw their name here I was kind of hoping to find out they were secretly an evil cult of knife-worshippers or something, and that I'd dodged a bullet. Oh, well.

I would also need to force myself to watch HSN.

edit: held on to the period button for too long apparently.

Chamomile wrote:My last job interview was with CutCo. I did not get the job. When I saw their name here I was kind of hoping to find out they were secretly an evil cult of knife-worshippers or something, and that I'd dodged a bullet. Oh, well.

Did you interview with CutCo (manufacturer) or Vector Marketing? If it was vector, I'd try calling back. Make sure you drink the koolaid if you do though. Also decide ahead of time that you're willing and able to talk people into doing things.

Although I failed to convince Microsoft that I do NOT want Xbox Live automatically renewed, I managed to convince Chase that the transaction was not approved by me and they told Microsoft to bugger off.

I worked at Cutco for a summer. It was kind of shite.

Chamomile wrote: When I saw their name here I was kind of hoping to find out they were secretly an evil cult of knife-worshippers or something, and that I'd dodged a bullet. Oh, well.

Funny that you say that...

True Cutco story: We had weekly employees meetings. One week, during our meeting, we were given pieces of plywood by our manager. We were told to write down on these pieces what was stopping us from selling more knives. Then, one at a time, we stood in the center of our room, and everyone else gathered around the person in the center while chanting "yes yes yes yes..." At some point, the stander was supposed to raise his or her hand up, and everyone would go quiet, and the stander would punch the wood and break it. Then the next person would go. This was supposed to release your pinned up energies and make you a better salesman (my manager's words). After everyone had gone, she told us all to go run around in the yard of our building for a while.

It was really fucking weird.

Blicero wrote:Funny that you say that...

True Cutco story: We had weekly employees meetings. One week, during our meeting, we were given pieces of plywood by our manager. We were told to write down on these pieces what was stopping us from selling more knives. Then, one at a time, we stood in the center of our room, and everyone else gathered around the person in the center while chanting "yes yes yes yes..." At some point, the stander was supposed to raise his or her hand up, and everyone would go quiet, and the stander would punch the wood and break it. Then the next person would go. This was supposed to release your pinned up energies and make you a better salesman (my manager's words). After everyone had gone, she told us all to go run around in the yard of our building for a while.

It was really fucking weird.

Yeah, I've heard of shit like that. It's some dumb motivational speaking, team building, group think bullshit.

Now where it gets weirder is when people put stuff on their boards like 'family', 'children', 'poor people' and so forth.

My brother would cut a metal plate with his scissors to motivate himself.