Back in the early '80s, I was going out with a chick whose stepmother was into Amway. Of course, as these things will happen, it was only a matter of time before she got my girlfriend involved in it. She tried to get me into it too, but I told her that door-to-door sales was not one of those things I was interested in, especially since Amway’s products were more expensive than what one could buy elsewhere.
Naturally, she had rhetoric around that (which also included documents, charts, and testimonials from satisfied customers), and she tried it, but to no avail; I reiterated that I was just not interested. Before long (after going to a couple of meetings), my girlfriend also tried to sell me on Amway.
Then her stepmother mentioned that there was a convention coming up in a month or so in Winnipeg, and she would only be too glad to take us there, all expenses paid (especially since she didn’t know how to get around in the city and I did). In order to get a little peace and quiet on the issue, I mentioned that I would be willing to go if I wasn’t doing anything else that weekend, but until then, they should cool it on trying to recruit me.
The recruitment reminded me of those people of certain religions who go from house to house knocking on doors. There is a religious aspect in that one should be thankful to God for allowing man to create the free market enterprise system, etc., and some of them get downright zealous over this aspect which blurs religion and sales (more on this below).
The weekend in question comes along, and I’m conveniently sick, so they go without me. Turns out that Zig Ziegler was there as a guest speaker, talking all about how one could achieve the good life through Amway. What I found curious is that both women came away from that portion of the meeting each with five or six Zig Ziegler tapes, costing each of them about $50 (which was not an insignificant amount of money in 1982).
I laughed at them, telling them that obviously, Zig Ziegler had hit a goldmine – and all he had to do was stand up in front of a lot of people and bullshit them, and then sell them his tapes afterward. He had truly found “The American Dream”!
They weren’t too keen on this assessment, and wouldn’t admit that they had been had.
It wasn’t too long before I was out of the picture by choice, anyway.
Unfortunately, I left too early to be able to rub it in about how Amway got caught in Canada evading customs duties and got fined $25 million. That would have been worth sticking around for if I had been able to. (For information on this, see http://www.rickross.com/reference/amway/amway13.html for some of the facts in the case; please disregard where the material comes from and any mentions of specific religions because that’s not what I’m pushing with the link).
Antinor01 (above) states regarding Amway and religion:
Funny enough, that’s how they start the day at most US Wal-Marts, too. There is a blurring of religion and sales, and also the notion that God should be thanked for allowing man to invent free enterprise in general and for allowing them to be privileged enough to be able to live in such a system.
I guess the idea is to take people’s minds off the crappy low wages they are making or something, while the Walton clan gets richer and richer every day.
They tried the same thing in Canadian Wal-Marts and it failed miserably right off the get-go, with most employees saying that it was stupid and a big waste of time; Canadians are not as outwardly patriotic as Americans are, nor do they usually make public professions of their religion if they follow one. On top of that, Canadian law views such meetings with suspicion, especially since they skate relatively close to infringing Employment law in the case of making attendance at such meeings cumpulsory, especially if they aren’t paying employees to attend them, not to mention that the quasi-religious aspect can be in violation of Canadian Human Rights Laws.