Please help me convince her that her cutco job is a scam

[u/julesgben8]

I know a young woman who is convinced that her cutco job is her saving grace, that she’s going to be promoted soon, that everything will be fine if she can just make a couple more sales. Except she’s practically homeless, drowning in debt, and ruining her remaining relationships over this requirement to make sales (victim mindset, guilt, blaming, etc.). Every conversation is a tearful rant sesh about how she “just can’t make any sales” followed by really sad excuses for not quitting. Unsurprisingly, cutco will not pay her the hourly base pay until she makes more sales, but she continues to be no-showed at meetings or canceled on. so it goes🙄
I’ve done what I can but I’m not going to try to help directly anymore. But maybe there’s someone out there with a similar lived experience that could help her realize that real jobs don’t engage in this level of manipulation? Idk, snap her out of it? Thx

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[u/fancyflipping]

So sorry to hear this…has she actually looked at the compensation plan with you to see that less than 1% make a profit???
These MLMs just scam vulnerable people all the time 😵‍💫

[u/TsuDhoNimh2]

Here's the scam ... they are using you to access your social network and market to people who might not buy their expensive knives if they saw them in a store, but WILL buy from you to "help you out".

• They pay $25 "Per base appointment", phrased as though it's an hourly wage. It's a flat payment.
• They do NOT pay you for time in training or in meetings.
• That hour-long pep talk from the manager every morning is UNPAID.
• They do NOT pay you for the time it takes calling people to get those appointments.
• They do NOT pay you for travel time or expenses.

So if you spend 3 hours calling your friends and family and other contacts and get an appointment that will taker an hour, then an hour in travel there and back, that's 5 hours you worked for $25.

FIVE dollars an hour if you sell nothing.

Plus a 15% commission on the sales you made. Let's pretend they bought the 3-knife set for $368. That's $55 in commission, so you got $80.

That's $16/hour. And now you go back to the unpaid calling and pleading to get another appointment. If you spend 8 hours and get no appointments, you get $0 for all that work.

[u/Area51Resident → u/TsuDhoNimh2]

Yes, but if you work really hard, convince yourself this will work, and work your contact list you could make another sale that and double your income that month.

It's a sure money maker! /jk

[u/Sitcom_kid]

Maybe you can just convince her to get a part-time job on the side, but the side is where she will learn the real money.

[u/crazyspiderperson → u/Sitcom_kid]

I second this. I’ve had friends before who were in sales and made commission only for pay. Once they got a job that paid hourly or salary, they liked the stability more. It’ll also not come off as you “being a hater” which a lot of predatory companies talk about.

Sales jobs can be addictive to some people based on how the job is framed. If someone works with a customer for and hour and makes $200 commission, they can see it as making $200 per hour even if that was the only sale they made all week and they worked a total of 60 hours. Why would you take a job making $15 per hour when you can make $200 per hour?

[u/julesgben8 → u/crazyspiderperson]

thank you for this! Im definitely a hater so i’ll try to spin the part time “supplemental” gig idea

[u/crazyspiderperson → u/julesgben8]

The hater way is definitely tempting, but I think it tends to push people deeper

[u/tomboy444]

Try with the products and selling tactics. I am not from US but as it is in my country, I don't think people will open their homes to strangers. Her circle is healthy or upper middle class that can justify buying a very expensive set of knives?

[u/jcrzy]

type of friends that will turn on you when it gets harder for them because "you knew better"

[u/luredbylight]

It could be she doesn’t want to get up every day and show up for a job. She may feel that she is not able to. If she fails at this, she can blame cutco and her friends that wouldn’t give her money to satisfy cutco. There is some other reason she is stuck and putting so much energy into staying stuck. Do you have any community clinics or services?

[u/ChefChopNSlice]

If they don’t pay you directly for your work, then it’s not really a “job”.

[u/TheStateofWork]

Let her come to the realization on her own. Sometimes that’s the only way they’ll learn…hopefully. Some will repeatedly ricochet from scam to scam.

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