Plays Well With Others

Live, Work, Sleep …

Once you reach a certain age in life, you move from the sleeping and partying stage to the more categorized personal life, work life, and sleep life stages. Basically, the everything you do until retirement will fit nicely in one of those three categories. And so, most of what I write about also fits in one of those three categories.

Everyday, when I leave work I pass the break room. Inside of the break room is a large ceiling mounted television set with cable and all the channels you could ever dream of having. During working hours, the sets are usually tuned to CNN or some kind of financial news segment, but everyday around 5PM when I’m heading out, I hear what sounds like cartoons. Even I know that CNN hasn’t come to the point of showing cartoons, so the other day I finally went in to investigate.

Entering the break room, I found a lady, probably in her late 30’s/early 40’s and dressed in a business suit, watching cartoons. My first thought was that she wasn’t really watching them, but that they just happened to be on. So, I explained that everyday when I’m heading out I could hear this cartoon being played and before I could finish, she explained that it was her favorite cartoon – Sagwa, the Chinese, Siamese Cat. Erm.

Then she invited me to come in and watch anytime I wanted to. Erm. I dont like cartoons. And, I’m not sure I want to sit around with my coworkers during my off hours watching cartoons at work. Erm. But thanks anyway.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it a little strange. The strange part, is that when I went in to ask about what she was watching, in the middle of explaining it to me, she’d stop and start talking to the TV … “poor Sagwa, she’s sad now because her friend is being mean to her” or “oh no, run Sagwa, before the bad guy catches you.” Erm. Okay, I think that’s my cue to go.

Buh bye.

Anyone have coworkers with strange habits?

And speaking of work, my cousin asked me to meet with him about some e-commerce stuff. Because I’d just finished up my stepmother’s website, I figured it had something to do with getting some design work.

Of course, at a dinner a week before, he’d told my stepmother that he wanted to meet with her about a way he could help her make between $50,000 – $250,000 a year in extra income, so my warning bells were already going off – Pyramid Scheme.

Wifey™ and I headed to the Starbucks where we were meeting and he was in there working on his laptop. Did you know that most Starbucks are wired for wireless internet? It’s neat actually, you have a wireless card in your laptop and then when you walk into the cafe, the signal is picked up from their unit and you are immediately online. You pay about $30/mo. for the service, but it’s pretty neat if you are always on the go. You can basically, do all your meetings at local Starbucks and always have a connection.

Anyhow, that wasn’t the point of the meeting. Let me just say that if you have a feeling about something, it’s probably true. And so, I spent the next hour listening to him go on about an Amway type of company – it could even be the same company – called Quixtar. It’s basically a company that produces and obtains merchandise and stores them in their distribution center and then, if you join, you can sell these products to people and make money from their purchases – sort of like commision. The other alternative, is to get people to join the business, so they can sell the products on their own – these people become your downline. Basically, you make money off of the products you sell, and you also get a cut from everyone under you (your downline) and everything they sell and the people under them sell. Of course the more people under you and under those people the more you make. There’s more to it, but that’s the jist of the system. Basically, the company that distributes the products makes TONS of money off of all these people trying to sell their products. The problem is that it takes up vast amounts of your personal time trying to “pitch” the idea to other people and to grow your “downline”.

The only reason I know so much about this whole system is that I’ve been to other presentations, just like this one. Probably five or so years ago, a friend from high school invited me and my friend to a “party”. He described it as a “get together” and that it would be fun. Having nothing to do that particular day, we decided to go. Halfway there, we were even joking in the car that we thought it would turn out to be an Amway meeting. Erm. A quick lesson about jokes become reality.

We entered and found that most of the people were dressed in business suits, including the friend that invited us and there was an easle set up in the living room. Feelings of panic basically took over as we entered the room, knowing exactly what we were in for. The next two hours were filled with them droning on and on about the Amway system – of course, they didnt call it Amway, they renamed it something else, and then split us all up in to one-on-one groups. Erm. Basically, they tried to get us to commit to meet with them at our houses so they could “get us started”. That’s also where I basically told them that there was no way in hell that I wanted anything to do with them.

So basically I have to find a way to tell my cousin I’m not really interested right now. It’s possible that there are some people that have made it big doing this type of thing, but I have a feeling that there are also alot more that havent made it big at all, and have wasted alot of their time.

The reason these types of things work is that they get you were you are most vulnerable. They play on the fact that you probably hate your job and would probably like to go in business for yourself … and the fact that you probably want to be a millionaire. Dont you?

I just find that if I’m going to go into business for myself, I’d like to do it doing something I really enjoy. Personally, I dont want to have to sell products like toilet paper and deoderant to people. I dont want to have to spend my life trying to get people to buy “my” products or to have to go around talking to strangers about the “great way you can make between $50,000 – $250,000 a year”. Ugh. That’s actually my worst nightmare. I’d be much more happy opening a little shop somewhere and selling candles or baby clothes or something.

But everyone has their own opinions. Just beware if someone comes up and tells you about a great way you can become a millionaire – it’s sure to be a pyramid type of deal.

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