When I was nearly cheated...

Dave Traube

When I was in high school I worked as an assistant manager at Blockbuster Video. One day while working a weekend shift, a guy approached me and complimented me about my work ethic. He was a frequent customer and said that he had observed me working hard, and thought I had the perfect out-going personality for a specific job he had come across.

He gave me his business card, and I called him after I got off work. He proceeded to talk about the job he was prepared to offer me. It was in e-commerce, and according to him the sky was the limit in terms of advancement. I can even quote him saying, “My boss has been doing this for a decade and he makes six figures. I’ve only been doing it for three years and I’m already pushing $60,000.”

Even though the job description was a bit foggy, I decided to have a meeting with him in person. He wanted to meet me at a Hardee’s near my house, (which I thought was VERY strange) but I had already agreed to meet him so I went. After I got there he explained what I would be doing in more detail. It was a “pyramid scheme” in every way possible, in which I would have to recruit people like he was recruiting me to work under me, and then I would start to make money.

After he explained it he attempted to get me to commit to a $300 ticket to a training session for new hires in Charleston. I told him I would have to think about it, and never called him back.

I think that this situation is a smaller scale version of the story in Chapter nine about the new community being built. A pyramid scheme is only profitable for the people at the top, and the people at the bottom are constantly doing work to recruit more people so they can eventually make money as well. An investigation into where the initial money that must be paid to join goes, as well as if any money changes hands between people that work together in the company would be good place to start in investigating this story.

The problem with this story is that even though it feels wrong, there is nothing blatantly illegal about what this guy is doing. It is more a matter of personal discretion then anything else. It is very possible, however, that a more thorough look into the company would expose how people had been unfairly cheated out of their money because a pyramid scheme like this can easily be illegal because it is simply trading money around, with the new hires constantly losing money until they are replaced by new ones which is not allowed by law.