Hello to those from r/AskUk,
I’m 22. Never had a job before, and just finished university about 3 weeks ago. I applied to a ‘Graduate Sales and Marketing Role’ because the requirements were simple. I managed to get the job and I received training for the past two days and I “quit” half an hour ago today because I came across multiple people on reddit/internet claiming it’s a terrible job.
I honestly did not know what to expect when accepting. I thought it was some marketing role and though partially true, I only found out it was door-to-door sales on the first day of training. The “coach” claimed to have made just a little under 30 sales in 3 days either last week or some point in time. I tend to have a trusting nature but even that sounds suspicious.
I was suppose to go out today for the first time with a coach and begin to sell. They currently sell a somewhat popular grocery box that you may have seen an advert of on a certain video platform, maybe even on this site. It’s also entirely commission based, and you work no matter the weather.
On the positive side, I now know what to look for when applying for other jobs and to stay clear of those titled ‘Brand Ambassador’ which there are a lot of. I just wanted some work experience, improve my skills and get some money to fuel my physical media collecting addiction and buy a guitar but I guess I could do that with another job.
Does anyone have experience actually being a door to door sales person? Did it help with anything or was it a complete waste of time or scam.
For those who have had a knocking by these sales people, what was your experience? Did you buy or tell them to bugger off?
7 comments
Yep, these companies are notoriously slimy – I wouldn’t worry about it. My girlfriend turned up to an “interview” and it just involved just knocking on people’s doors, so she walked off after about an hour. Had to pay her own bus fare and everything.
>I “quit” half an hour ago today because I came across multiple people on reddit/internet claiming it’s a terrible job
This might be the dumbest thing I have ever read. Maybe it is an awful job, but why in the fuck would you quit something because people on reddit said so? At least maybe experience it yourself first?
My first “graduate job” was a “sales executive” for a media publisher, basically cold calling companies to sell advertising space in their magazines. It was terrible, the training was 3 days then just thrown straight in. They basically teach you how to be an arsehole to the secretaries in businesses. I stayed long enough for the bank to issue me a graduate loan, then I quit the job and worked in a sports store before getting a real graduate job a few months later. Some of the people I worked with loved it and had been there a while. Basic salary plus OTE. It wasn’t for me though.
My wife tried to do this for a few months about 15 years ago. She hated every second of it. It was long hours, she rarely “signed someone up” and when she did the company paid her half commission the next month and the other half in 6 months time if the customer continued paying their direct debits (they never did). She was essentially being paid less than minimum wage for 14 hour days and then they’d guilt trip her in to driving people to and from different towns around the UK which cost her a fortune in petrol. Absolute Scam
The customers hate being bothered and the companies are parasites
Honestly, sounds like an MLM by what you’ve described. Pretty sure r/antimlm has a list of companies that are in fact MLMs so you can cross reference there and see if the company you’re talking about is in fact one. Basically pyramid schemes.
The majority who join these companies lose money and the only way to earn money is to recruit people underneath you. Most of these people have resorted to placing false jobs on job websites just like the one you described because they don’t have anymore friends or family members to recruit under them anymore.
I say you dodged a bullet, if it is an MLM you could’ve ended up in some serious debt.
I guess it depends on the company, I was a “brand ambassador” for the oculus VR headset and it wasn’t commission based at all I just got given hours I had to spend in a Curry’s /PC world and I just informed people about the product