JW's and Selling Stuff at the Hall

by lepermessiah 18 Replies latest jw friends

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  lepermessiah

  My wife got an invite to a "party" and got me thinking.....

  One of the biggest things that used to annoy me was how many members of the congregation were involved in those MLM sales schemes or "work from home" companies and they used the KH as the hub of their business.

  Many of those companies are very legit, and I have no problem with people selling that stuff, its just that people would use their field service tactics to pressure others in the hall to buy stuff.

  Every week, a member of my family would get invited to a candle party, cosmetics party, Tupperware party, Vitamin party, etc......you could go bankrupt just from the constant flow of parties and feeling obligated to buy something.

  The sad part was that if you turned down the invite or went and didnt buy anything, you would offend the selller!

  Then, they would always run around and deliver their orders before and after the meeting (unles the elders put a stop to it), otherwise you would see them out in their car after the meeting distributing everyones' orders.
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  zoiks

  I remember stuff like that! It didn't happen much around here, but we did have one person who sold herbs out of her home. There would be transactions in the KH until the elders put a stop to it. From then on, they took place in the parking lot - blind exchanges, dead drops, real secret agent stuff.

  Lepermessiah - as sad as I am to see your Metallica avatar go, the new one is... not bad at all!
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  chickpea

  there was a "proclamation" from the platform
  to take ALL the activity off the KH grounds...
  so the "drop-offs" were re-routed to the local
  McD's
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  maninthemiddle

  Chickpea, I remember when we had a similar command.

  My parents were into all kinds of MLM crap. Also the vitamin MLMs were very common where I grew up. I think that they draw people who don't like to work, like my father. It is great for people who can't do physical labor, but the people i knew thought it was a way to get rich and not have to work a job.
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  lepermessiah

  Lepermessiah - as sad as I am to see your Metallica avatar go, the new one is... not bad at all!

  Thanks - I thought one of the all-time great Leper Messiahs deserved a tribute.
• 

  LongHairGal

  lepermessiah,

  Maybe in the beginning I attended one or two of these types of parties but then I decided not to accept any invitations from 'friends' for these types of things.

  I felt it just reduced your interactions with people there to a financial transaction. And the bottom line is that is all that they wanted you for. When they looked at people all they saw were dollar signs and this is not the way so-called christians should be looking at each other. I also felt that it was a way that these people fooled themselves into thinking they were 'showing hospitality' or 'association'. Yeah, hospitality with a snare.
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  Gayle

  its just that people would use their field service tactics to pressure others in the hall to buy stuff.

  It's the other way around. Their field service tactics copy the 'MLM business' tactics. They try to sell literature with the motive to get others in to also sell literature. Except, the distributors don't make money at all; just the headquarters does.
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  poopsiecakes

  This was always something that bugged the crap out of me. Witnesses are such suckers for the MLM thing, especially anything to do with health or making you look younger. I would sometimes go to these parties out of guilt, listen to the spiel and wonder why why why. Why do they latch onto everything like this if they believe in their hearts that the new system will fix everything? MLM companies really have a gold mine going with these people...
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  WTWizard

  My former Hell had little tolerance for this. I have been offered a couple of supplements from witlesses--there was a product called KM (which tasted nasty and did nothing). I wasted about $25 on that KM. I have never been pressured to become a distributor of these products. And, the products I recommended were in the vitamin stores.

  Now, as for buying things from the witlesses, you have to be careful. Look at the prices at the stores. If the witlesses are charging more than the going prices, do not buy. Also, do not buy product you have no use for just because you are supporting another witless, or if it is crap (that is, inferior quality). Personally, I would never buy one of those fire-starter candles from the witlesses when I have LED candles (fire safe) everywhere. Tupperware anyone? I don't think so--not when I can get cheaper temporary storage ware at my local supermarket or better permanent storage ware at Stonewall Kitchen.

  I get my vitamins at regular vitamin stores or online. The vitamins I get at the Vitamin Shoppe are as good as, if not better than, anything the witlesses are going to sell you (at inflated prices). You can get cleanses there that are superior to that KM crap. There are also numerous other places you can go online, like QN Labs, if you are interested in buying vitamins but not interested in being hounded to become a distributor or listening to hyped-up claims by other distributors. You can also get things like the Q-Link and similar devices (that are supposed to reduce electromagnetic chaos), along with doing additional research to see if such a device will actually be worth the $100-600 you will be paying (depending on which device you actually get). And, if you don't feel like buying anything, you can always click the red X at the top right of your screen or browse another page.
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  Quirky1

  Oh the Noni juice...