Diary of a Broke-ass Chapter 2 part 3
Last time I left of on Dan the Vacuum sales owner being addicted to drugs, with a gambling problem and commuting check fraud. The saga continues with:
Chapter 2 part 3
Jane had talked to Jack. He said that he would be more then happy if we worked for him. I would get better pay. After my fifth sale in a week I would get an extra $50 on each sale. And I made that goal. Sweet. $750 in one week. I hadn't made money like that since I lived in LA.
At this time half the crew was still in Elko, and half here with Jane and I in Redding. Jane started to get calls from the police regarding embezzlement and check fraud. While The crew in Elko was crashing and
burning, due to Dan's illegal actions. People are sketchy about vacuum sales people to begin with. And in Elko it was all over the newspapers that people were in town selling vacuums and it was a total scam. They would pressure you into buying, cash the check and skip town. Trying to save face for Jack's company was hard. Eventually they ended up just moving to Reno to sell instead. But not before the police were involved investigating the real check fraud that Dan had committed. When all was said and done the cops in both Redding and Elko were communicating. We found out that there were other customers in Redding who had canceled their purchase, gave back the machine, and never got their money back. Dan had skipped town. And nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. His wife sold all the furniture in the office and was filling for divorce.
Now if it was hard enough people were not receiving their gift cards. I would knock on someones door and then get yelled at because they had done a review and not received their gift card. People were screaming that I was a scam artist to my face.
Now here's the thing with the gift cards. When I show up I hand the person at the door a gift card. But its just a dummy card. There is nothing on it. They use to give people gift cards with money on them. The problem with the loaded cards was that the sales people would steal them. And people would not agree to participate in the review but take the card and shut the door. So the companies were losing money. Now we give them a dummy card, and when the people finish the review we ask for the card back and explain that there is nothing on it. Then we give them a redemption card. Which I think is better. Because they get to pick any store they want the gift card to be from. The bad thing about this was that Dan was not sending the cards out. Then we found out latter that this guy Rick was not sending out his gift cards either. And he now worked with us for Jack! What a way to burn through a city that you were in. I don't care how insane they are. That is just bad policy. People talk in a small town. And nobody will let you in if they hear that its a scam.
However good I did that week, it was too slow from the sales people.They were use to getting at least 4 sales a week each. And there was 3 sales people in the car. So again everyone left for a road trip. And Jane and I were left in Redding. At thins point Redding was burned. We had a feeling it was. But we were desperately trying to squeeze any sale we could from it. To no avail. Jane lost her apartment. And things looked grim. They wanted us to go on trips with them. This was not okay with my husband. Not to mention that I didn't want to be away from him for weeks and weeks at a time. I didn't want to make this my career. On the road. Living out of cheap motels. Never getting to see my friends or family. Moving from city to city. What kind of life is that? Things were already out of hand just working in and around town. We would work from nine till after dark. Then drive all the way home. I would get home around seven to nine at night. Enough time to eat something and wind down for bed. And it was taking a tole on my marriage. Things had spiraled out of control. Jane and I switched from working for Jack to working for another guy. Then back to working for Jack with another raise. I was now making 10%. And we still were not making enough money to live. As a last ditch effort Jane her daughter and I made a weekend trip to Eureka. The road trip from hell.
To be continued... With Chapter 3 part 1