Pyramid Scheme

There’s a pair of two-minute interactions I had in 2013 that still haunt me.

It was a Saturday. I’d just moved out of my parents’ house. I can’t remember what I was doing that weekend. Probably housework. I was interrupted by a knock at the door. Thinking it was probably a package, I answered.

There was a woman standing there. She had long gingerish, blondish hair and was wearing a grey polo shirt and jogging bottoms. She was with her partner, dressed in a blue fleece and checked shirt. He was a bit taller than me. The man didn’t say anything. He looked uncomfortable.

The woman was brandishing a catalogue and started talking at me about homecare products. I recognised the name of the company on the catalogue. My girlfriend had almost been tricked into working for them the summer before. The company was one of those ‘like a pyramid scheme but different enough so we can get away with it’ that sold toilet cleaners and sponges and soap dishes and things like that.

It felt like the woman had rehearsed her lines. She handed me the catalogue without even asking me if I wanted it. I was about to say the obvious “I get all of my homecare products from the supermarket around the corner and they’re usually a lot cheaper than these catalogues,” but I didn’t. Part of me just saw the guy’s trembling lip and the woman’s clearly fake smile and I felt sorry for them for having to do this. Having to traipse from door to door so they can have a tiny cut of this parasitic company’s profits (because I knew these people worked on commission from prior experience).

I took the catalogue and said I’d think about it. I shut the door. I didn’t understand why they’d given me the catalogue in a plastic wallet, but I didn’t think too much of it.

I put the catalogue in the recycling without opening it, assuming they gave these to everyone and that if I didn’t say yes right away then they wouldn’t bother returning, but they did.

The next day, at about lunchtime again, someone knocked on the door.

It was the same woman and her boyfriend, both wearing the same clothes as yesterday. They asked me if I’d looked at their catalogue. I said I had, but the supermarket around the corner was cheaper.

That was when she asked if they could have their catalogue back. I was confused for a second, and then I realised that to cut corners in costs, the company had only given these people one catalogue. The woman and her boyfriend couldn’t just hand these out to anyone. They had to give it to people they really had their hopes set on.

I should point out here that my recycling bin is outside by my door. They were stood right next to it!

Embarrassed, I went to the recycling bin, retrieved the catalogue, and gave it back to them. They both looked embarrassed, and the woman said a disappointed “thanks” and they walked away.

I shut the door and felt terrible for the rest of the day.

I was haunted by this moment because I imagined what their home lives might have been like. They were both about the same age as me, maybe a bit younger. Maybe they’d just got out of school and had no idea what to do next and had been recruited by these people because they didn’t know better. Maybe they hadn’t got into university like I had. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I got out of school either and had just happened to fall into a job that paid me enough so I could move out and start renting. How would these two be able to ever move out on the sliver of profits they’d be getting from that homecare company? Especially for the amount of effort they’d have to put into patrolling our area that wouldn’t leave them with the time to search for something better. They would get barely even a tenth of minimum wage for what they were doing. I remembered my partner being made to do a government ‘workfare’ scheme where she would have to stack shelves in a supermarket for 8 hours a day for her benefits, essentially being paid 37p an hour for what should have been minimum wage work.

I thought back to times that me and my partner had been low on money. We’d been teaching ourselves how to cook savers food with what little money I had from my supermarket job and we were doing a terrible job at it.

I remember on my 20th birthday my partner got me a video game I’d had my eye on for a while because it was now cheap enough pre-owned. The game turned out to be terrible, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her or even sell the game for the money because it was a reminder of a time when I didn’t have any money and just didn’t have a clue where to go next.

That couple that came to my door to sell me on the (not)pyramid scheme probably wouldn’t want my sympathy, and who knows, maybe their lives turned out alright. Maybe they split up, got married, had kids, got better jobs, died, who knows? Maybe life got better. Maybe it didn’t, but that moment where I realised they had only been given one catalogue really stuck with me. It made me think back to my supermarket job, having to sit at a checkout for hours on end being berated by customers because I looked funny or the fact we were out of stock of an item that I had no control over. It made me think about the time my partner got a zero-hour contract at a company that could have just given her fixed hours, but decided not to, and she never received any shift offers from them at all. These two had probably had a representative from the pyramid scheme come to their door, offering them a catalogue, talking about working on commission. They must have leapt at it because everyone was telling them to get jobs and move out, pay their own way, don’t be a lay about, and when you’re desperate and vulnerable, that’s when a company like this can make you traipse around your neighbourhood for ten hours a day embarrassing yourself for pennies.

Anyway, not long after that, I read an article in a newspaper about how millennials weren’t struggling financially, they just needed to stop having avocado toast.

I got so angry I wanted to puke.