As I recall, Cutco wasn’t like Amway. It was selling products door to door. There wasn’t a multilevel marketing scheme involved.
Yes and thanks, I’m glad it all worked out. There was no opportunity to consult with any legal representative.
My door-to-door story:
This one wasn’t a recruiter but I was lied to regarding a transfer within the organization:
My first real job was in the mailroom of one of the smallest federal agencies; so small that we mailroom clerks were also responsible for the supply room. My back eventually became an issue so I agreed to be sent upstairs, ostensibly to assist the sole IT guy.
Ended up doing manual labor most of the time, putting barcodes on incoming grant applications. They had me working with a woman who, every five minutes or so, sounded like she was going to cough up a lung. Yuk!
Yeah, Cutco’s thing was to convince high school kids to spend their summer trying to sell knives door to door. They were told to make their first sales to their family and friends’ families, who would presumably be easier targets.
I was just a HS kid looking for a summer job. I don’t recall what they told me, but not that it was selling magazine subscriptions door to door. I spent one morning going DTD with someone “showing me the ropes” and left at noon and went home. I supposed I was owed a half day’s pay, but I didn’t care.
When I was 14 or 15, so around 1985, I saw an ad for canvasing neighborhoods putting flyers on people’s doors. Sounded like easy money, so I called the number. I was told someone would pick me up at my house at a specific time.
I waited out front, and a white block van with no windows(!) pulled up. There were three other kids my age already in the van, and the driver looked like he was in his 20s. (There was nothing nefarious about this, and I didn’t think twice about getting in the van. But I can’t see such a thing flying these days!)
Once we were on the road, the driver said he “had a different idea” than putting out flyers. How about we try selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door instead? I immediately thought “no fucking way,” but I was too nice and/or meek to demand he take me back home. So I spent a couple of hours going through the motions, and I don’t recall that I made any sales.
When dude dropped me off, he asked if I wanted to do it again the next night, and I said no thanks. Then he said if he needed someone to do flyers, could he give me a call? I said sure, I’d be happy to do that, but I had no interest in sales. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I never heard from him again.
I’m curious. When you decide to sign up for the military, when do they give you the contract to sign? Obviously your not committed to the military at that point so why can’t you be like "I’ll take this home and and bring it back to you in a few days.
I signed my contract after arriving at my NROTC unit in college. It was a little nerve-wracking because I had to sign an 8-year enlistment contract (!). This was to cover the worst-case scenario if I had them pay for four years of college, but then did not accept an officer commission. (The deal was they would get at least one year of enlistment out of me for every year they paid for college.)
Then I had to sign it again a month later when I turned 18. 
In neither case did I consult with a lawyer, nor was I given any time to do so.
When I graduated, they tore that contract up (metaphorically) and I signed a new contract agreeing to serve at least five years as an officer (instead of the usual four years) because I went into the Navy nuclear-power program.
My recollection of the military contract was you had an opportunity to get it in advance, look it over, have a lawyer or parents look it over, etc.
But at the moment of truth, they handed it to you and the choice was sign as-is or walk out as a still-civilian. If there were any differences between what you’d reviewed 3 weeks ago and what they stuck in front of your nose that morning, it was up to you to notice them.
My attitude at the time is that it was implausible the government would be playing bait-and-switch with the fine print. So if the basic fill-in-the-blank info was as I recalled, I was good.
Speaking of contracts…
I’m a Qualified Individual (QI) under my state’s electrical contractor licensing board. In order to have an electrical contractor license, a company must have at least one QI as a bona-fide employee (i.e., gets a W-2). So I was approached by a recruiter a few years ago on behalf of a national company that wanted to open a branch in my state. They needed a QI and wanted me for this role, at least until they got one of their own employees qualified.
I explained all of the licensing requirements to the recruiter. I would need to have actual supervisory authority over the work and be “regularly on active duty.” I also explained that I needed to be a bona-fide employee. He assured me of that everything I said was not a problem.
Eventually I got a contract to review. What? No supervisory authority. No responsibility to review plans or check work. I’d be a straw man for licensing purposes only. Furthermore, I’d be a contractor, receiving a 1099, which is completely unacceptable to our licensing board. Plus, they wanted to pay me based on the contracts they got, not on a salary or hourly basis.
As a stinger, they had a non-compete requirement, which I had specifically brought up with the recruiter as being a showstopper. It was basically, “leave for any reason, including termination, and you can’t do similar work for five years.”
I didn’t even try to talk to the recruiter or the company again. I just wrote “No, thanks.” and sent it back. Never heard from either of them again.
They gave it to me on the morning I shipped off for boot camp.
As a bonus, whatever goes wrong up to and including the work killing somene, it’s legally your fault. What a great deal.
Sounds like an experience I had in a charter school, where they asked me to be on the IEP (Individual Education Plan, for students who need accommodations) team for a student, because regulations required at least one general-education teacher on the team. They picked me because I had a planning period at the time the parent wanted to meet with the team. Never mind that I didn’t actually have the student in class, and that I was therefore legally prohibited from being on the IEP team.