Suckers and Other Desperate People

Have you ever been on a ride at an amusement park that just keeps going around and around with no purpose other than to make you sick? Have you wanted to scream “Stop this ride; I want to get off”? I’m on one of those right now. Not an amusement park ride, but definitely a nauseating experience that I would truly like to stop. On the radio this morning I heard that people who are unemployed are traumatized. Really? Was there a survey I missed? Nobody asked me. I’m way beyond traumatized! I’ve made it through “pummeled” to “paralyzed”. I’m so battered, I want to curl up in a ball and sleep through the rest of this story. I want to wake up and find that this has all been a joke. That I’m really well prepared for the future and that everything is just fine.

First thing this morning, I got a call from a guy who said he had seen my poster for acting classes at the supermarket. I sat up immediately, pushing the grogginess from my voice and putting on my best, nurturing acting-teacher tone. But he wasn’t interested in my classes. Instead, he saw in the face on the poster a person who needed work! He invited me to a seminar on a “career opportunity” at noon. It seems they are opening offices all along the I. 84 corridor and are looking for ‘staff’”. Now, in my dictionary, when you say ‘staff’, you mean employees. But they don’t want to hire anyone. They are recruiting. Despite my husband’s immediate negativity, I decided to check it out.

“Step right up folks! Do you have a dream? Are you stuck in a J-O-B? Are you just making your age? People are in trouble! They have bad mortgages, too much debt, and not enough money! And that’s good news for us! Your job sucks! You’ll never make a million! Look at me! I was in a corporation and co-workers said I was doing great!! At 22 I made $22K. At 23, $23K. By the time I was 28 I said ‘This is not for me!’ Now I’m making $21,000 a month! I don’t need new carpeting! I don’t need a new car! I’m going to retire with millions! What about you? Wouldn’t you like that?

No sir, I’m an idiot. I like being broke and going nowhere. But stop it! I feel bad enough without you standing up there in your cheap suit and dull shoes telling me what a shmuck I am! Slow down! Make sense! Stop spitting slogans at me at the speed of light! Stop with the rah-rah cheerleading and the pyramids and the pink Cadillacs and vacations and tell me how this works!

I’m not even beginning to do justice to this guy. Beady Eyes, high cheekbones with sunken cheeks, hawk-like nose; I was in the presence of a natural born predator! He was smarmy and condescending and I hated him instantly!

“First we’ll take their credit cards and we’ll put them over here. Then we’ll take their mortgage and we’ll put it over there.” I couldn’t help thinking of the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when the Scarecrow has been ripped to shreds by the witch’s flying monkeys and the Lion and the Tin Man rebuild him. And I started mentally applying the principles that were being hurled at me.
“We’ll put ‘em back together and you know what we’ll do with the left over straw?”
“Feed it to the horses?”
“No! The horses don’t need hay! They don’t need a new saddle! My neighbors drive around in their fancy leased buggies and ask me why I don’t get a new one. And I say, ‘Well, mine’s paid for!’ No, I’ll tell you what we’ll do with the leftover straw. We’ll build another scarecrow!”
“Oh!”
“And then we’ll have two scarecrows. And by the time we retire, using the rule of 72, we’ll have us an army of scarecrows!”

And, as if getting rich wasn’t enough, there are incentives: Jamaica! Hawaii! “Wouldn’t you like to take a vacation at someone else’s expense?” Okay, I’m starting to get it. So how many friends and relatives do I have to sacrifice on the altar of your ambition to pay my bills and retire comfortably? One a week? Two? Four! At that rate, I’ll be out of friends rather quickly. “Oh, but each person you talk to has to give you 10 more names. And look, they’ll write personal recommendations! Well, we’ll write them and they’ll sign them!” And all I’m thinking about is that I can’t get ten people to take a class and I’m tired of dragging people to the trough and selling people what they don’t want. I’m thinking that I don’t have 40 years left to build a nest egg! I’m thinking that three members of my own family are already selling financial plans and I want to head over to the bar next door and drown out the noise of all this promise.

Yes, the plan is based on good, sound principles. But taking it to the level of Evangelism is sick! I have lost friends because we couldn’t have a conversation that didn’t involve Amway or Mary Kay or Shaklee or Scientology. These aren’t bad ideas (well, except perhaps for Scientology); they’re the ONLY ideas. Once you get involved, you are a card-carrying member of a cult.

One thing I did learn: what to teach my son so that he is not in this position when he is my age. Me? I’m going to the gym.