Pyramid Scheme: A Gtfo Story...

[Phobotech]

What experiences have you had when it involves attending seminars, conventions, presentations, or even just lending an ear to a pyramid scheme?

I've attended one, without knowing what it was until the thing already started.
I've been called by a friend who was wrangled into one and needed a sucker- err, customer to help her out...
...and recently I got done with a four day job in which I worked in preparing and then FILMING the whole thing as it happened.

I'll share my experiences after I got some sleep...

Don't know what a pyramid scheme is? Fuckit, here you go.

lol, its like a step up from "Let Me Google That For You"

I look forward to detailing my "GTFO" experience to you and then my experience as a cameraman for Preservation of Wealth.

[killerjeff]

Well, there was this one time in school they taught me about the food pyramid.

[KatMaestro]

It's not a myth. Both shady and legit business practice this. What I meant is you can see it everywhere, if you have the sight.

[Ragnarokia]

Well whenever I look for work atm I constantly see all the obviously money scheming adverts "BE YOUR OWN BOSS< MAKE MONEY WORKING FROM HOME! SIMPLE STEPS TO BECOME RICH!" and all that shit and I find it insulting that I get such things thrown at me when I am supposed to be looking for work from a legit site.....

There are so many of these things that always show pictures of expensive cars near a large house and putting in "YOU CAN BE LIKE THIS!" yea sure you can, if you work your ass off with lying to people and forcing them into your shit you can maybe make enough money to pay back the cost of what they are going to demand from you while they reap all the profits from you doing their dirty work for them and then you end up being the one who the police would come to when they do something illegal as they are working through you and the way they word the stuff they get you to sign would be passing all blame onto you and they don't have to pay you for being their dirty hands.

I wish people as a whole got more sanity and intellect and didn't buy into the shit so they could no longer work, but there will always be people who can be coerced...especially those down on their luck and needing work, easy prey sadly.

[Voltage]

At 7/29/14 07:57 AM, Phobotech wrote: What experiences have you had when it involves attending seminars, conventions, presentations, or even just lending an ear to a pyramid scheme?

The first one was this company that was a door-to-door salesman selling knives. Selling knives, like wtf? They had this weird interrogation seminar about who was to be the next door-to-door salesman and apparently I made it to round 2, or whatever. They asked us to grab our licenses so we could start registering, I got in my car and drove off.

The next one was years later, my friend from school invited me to a sports bar so we could discuss some "business." So naturally I do, I show up, he's all dressed fancy (unconditional for this kid I knew) and I was like oh boy, must be a pyramid scheme. So he goes through this long assed discussion about working on cars, and having other plans on what to do for work, etc... then he busts out this "Plan B" chart and I'm like

"Good to see ya dude"

[PotHeadParadise]

pyramid scheme is created by the unknown leader of the illuminati.

[Phobotech]

So one day, I'm having lunch with one of my professors from Collin County Community College, Jay Schuh (pronounced "shoe"). This guy is a major mover and shaker, coast to coast, in the commercial animation and graphic design industry. One of my friends and classmates from my Photoshop and History of Animation Class (both taught by Schuh), actually became an intern of his, and was working alongside him to meet deadlines for major clients...this is something I've sought with Schuh for some time now, vying for valuable experience, especially when it comes to working fast and under pressure.

At this lunch, Schuh invited me to a major meeting with important professional individuals at some hotel conference hall in Frisco, TX. He asked for me to attend, bring something to take notes with, it'll be fun. Apparently he was invited, and the details of the meeting were vague. Since Schuh is a member of A Bunch of Short Guys, which is an animation guild, I assumed it had something to do with animation, art, digital design, 3D, SOMETHING to do with the creative industry...my assumptions were met with disappointment.

As I arrive, the halls outside of the hotel conference room, which was a wide hallway, filled shoulder-to-shoulder with middle-aged people and elderlies. Few seemed to be the creative types. Desks were set up selling products and sign up sheets, and in the murmurs of eavesdropped conversations, I learned this had something to do with the benefit of health and fitness. In passing introductions when I met up with Schuh and a few familiar faces from Quad C, I met one of the individuals that was professionally linked to the host of the function.

It was something to the effect of "Go Life Nutritional Solutions" or some shit...he asked if I had breakfast, and I told him I hadn't...so this old man gives me a foil cube, inside a tootsie-pop looking thing in appearance and texture, and fucking awful in taste...it was an appetite suppressant. It indeed worked at the time.

So here I am, in the deafening noise, heated stuffiness of a kinetic room filled with strangers, where I'm taking edibles FROM said strangers, and ingesting them on the spot before an event that involved loudspeakers...it was like a concert for boring, soulless people.

We funnel into the large conference room. No less than fifty rows of twenty chairs on each side, directed towards a stage with two large projected screens. On each seat were paper forms to fill out, where it asked us for our names, email and mailing addresses, contact information, and...our social security number and credit card information? lolwut? Uhh....I'm going to wait before I jot down a single letter.

We wait, and I successfully network contacts to the rest of Schuh's company, all Quad C students focused on the creative visual academia...people I can relate with. I crack out my sketchbook and start wittling away to kill time, as there was plenty of waiting.

Finally, the presentation begins. A man walks out in a suit, wild-eyed and energetically animated in his body language...the girl next to me thought he looked like he just got done doing a bump of coke. He did. He orders the staff from the corporate branch of this Go Life or whatever to stand in a row behind him. He went on to elaborate that none of them had any sleep, that they had ALL stayed up all night just to make sure that this conference would go right without a hitch....so much so, and I kept tally of it on my sketchbook, that he reminded us how none of them have slept, none of them sleep they take their jobs so seriously, they're like machines they don't sleep EIGHT MORE TIMES....at that point, I began to question the efficient working ability of a team that hasn't had a sufficient amount of rest.

Presumably wanting to wrap up the pleasantries of the introduction so he could go backstage and get more coke, he hurredly cued a video presentation. Where he's speaking to us about how awesome it is to sign up for this wonderful program (from in front of his fancy front door to his giant house, where the acoustics from the walls and hard floor are already awful, so his voice sounds muddy and echoey over the loudspeakers...could've almost used subtitles.) when it became clear that this was an organization of pyramid schemes. You sign up for a couple of hundred bucks, and get discounts when you buy shit like vitamins and skin care and whey and workout shit, supplements, even FOOD, and you get more and more discounts for every ten people you sign up.

Students wiser than I shook Jay's hand and walked out there when it became clear what this was. I stuck around to see if anything at all could catch my interest. None of it would...mercifully they didn't inflate the truth, or lie about an instant gratification of bonuses or "instantaneous wealth", but rather emphasized the self satisfaction and reward of making healthier lifestyle choices (by buying it from them) and how you can encourage others to do the same (so you can buy more shit, and they can buy from them.)

I GTFO. Shook Schuh's hand, thanked him for the opportunity, and in a phone call later, explained what I came to expect, what I'm interested in, and how none of that was what I had come for.

I'm running out of space for this post, so I'll wait on talking about my Preservation of Wealth story.

Feel free to keep sharing YOUR experiences.

At 7/29/14 08:03 AM, killerjeff wrote: Well, there was this one time in school they taught me about the food pyramid.

Its a scam. Devour more products; the more commercialized it is, the better.

At 7/29/14 01:04 PM, Ragnarokia wrote:
I wish people as a whole got more sanity and intellect and didn't buy into the shit so they could no longer work, but there will always be people who can be coerced...especially those down on their luck and needing work, easy prey sadly.

Financial desperation is very real. Something needs to change that can combat greed, and I don't know if thats even possible anymore in a modern society. Institutionalized into a dependency for fake money backed by nothing....yet, there has to be a better way, but I got nothin'.

At 7/29/14 02:53 PM, Voltage wrote:
"Good to see ya dude"

You have an admirable strength in time-management. I always fear coming off as rude for cutting people short, but I often wish I could be more precise with dodging time-wasters.

At 7/29/14 02:56 PM, PotHeadParadise wrote: pyramid scheme is created by the unknown leader of the illuminati.

....aaaaaand credibility goes flying out the window. lol

[sodacereal]

I had to literally beg a friend not to do this one, it was a bunch of his old military buddies trying to fuck him over.
he was doing skype interviews with like all of them, and the main guy. and he called out so much of his shit.

[FudgeMellow]

So like any time a door-to-door rings the bell? 'Tis the season to have some poor, sweaty person in a suit come a-ringin' & offering something worthless or another, at least. Hell, I had to do some of that when I was a part of my high school's marching band just to keep the band on the field, despite the massive size of my district.

[Phobotech]

At 7/30/14 03:22 AM, FudgeMellow wrote: So like any time a door-to-door rings the bell? 'Tis the season to have some poor, sweaty person in a suit come a-ringin' & offering something worthless or another, at least. Hell, I had to do some of that when I was a part of my high school's marching band just to keep the band on the field, despite the massive size of my district.

I've solicited Dallas Morning News subscriptions to people door-to-door, and I've even gone around trying to sing people up for cookies and pies and personalized pens and such for school, but none of those were pyramid schemes. One of them was a crappy job, and the others were local fundraisers in support of the NJROTC unit at my high school.

Are you sure they were pyramid schemes, or they were simply fundraisers?

[FudgeMellow]

At 7/30/14 03:31 AM, Phobotech wrote:
Are you sure they were pyramid schemes, or they were simply fundraisers?

Don't usually listen to anyone at the door long enough to really figure that out since I don't need it if I'm not looking for it. As for the band, it was more of walking door-to-door & asking for a donation & offering a band schedule in case they actually wanted to see us perform. We didn't sell anything, although if we sold cookie dough, I guarantee we would have made hella more money.

[NGPulp]

Never been to any of those pyramid scheme things.