It's a cult Jim but not as we know it

by mtbatoon 1 Replies latest jw friends

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  mtbatoon

  Has anyone else noticed any non religious organisations that behave in the same was as the JDubs?

  I've come across two, one was a karate school and the other Amway.

  I believe it has been mentioned before how Amway is cult like and I have to agree. The thing that gets me is the similarity to the WTS. I was working in Pizza Hut, a very dead end job, when a new bloke started who sold Amway stuff. It didn't take too long till he was looking for converts and soon found one in a colleague who I also new outside of work. The change in him was remarkable, he had the very same Dub glazed eyes when he talked of Amway, I learned that he had spent 100's of pounds on inspirational books and tapes, he couldn't borrow the original Amway members of coarse or copy the tapes. They went around saying that in 5 years they would be able to retire, both are still living in rented accommodation and are in low wage jobs. One of the strangest things was they started turning up to the monthly staff meetings in suits, remember that this is Pizza Hut staff we're talking about and most could just about put on a T-shirt the right way round after working all evening and then drinking and smoking till the wee small hours. The clincher came when there got back from an Amway convention and said the the speaker had declared it the largest gathering of “business people” in Europe.

  One day I agreed to go round to their house one evening and listen to their supplier chap try and sell me some petrol additive just to get them off my back. It was like Tuesday book study. They all got dressed up in their suits and arranged the chairs in a big circle. The chap went on about how all the poor misguided ones had to drudgingly go to the shops on a Saturday to buy there cleaning wares and how we could be living a better live if only we bought Amway cleaning products and maybe sold some on for him. I pointed out I actually like going shopping, I'd have to go anyway for food and it was no inconvenience to pick up the occasional bottle of bleach, plus I went mid week to avoid the Saturday rush.

  So anyone else had experience of Amway or any other group with cultist tendencies?
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  iggy_the_fish

  Once, when I was "between jobs" (after having gloriously flunked out of a teacher training course, but that's another story) I went along to a meeting which had been advertised in the local paper. The advert was very non-specific, just something about a good "business opportunity", so I thought what the hey and went along.

  Turns out these people were selling a range of food supliments, vitamins, minerals, that sort of thing. The whole deal was that you wore some kind of badge on your clothes, and used it as a way of starting conversations with people, and you quizzed them about their health problems and ailments, and you tried to sell them the appropriate bottle of "Dr. Good" to cure their ailment.

  Then we were shown a video of a recent conference of this company. Well, it was more like televangelism! People on a stage a whoopin' and a hollerin' about how many tens of thousands of dollars they had made that month, and the "faithful" in the audience were lapping it up, cheering and whistling. Lots of exhortations from the stage to "sell more, sell more, sell more". So at this point my anti-cult warning system was off the scale, and I snuck out the back.

  For all I know, I had totally the wrong idea about the company, but I certainly got the impression that working for them you had to buy into a certain mindset. That's the closest I've come to seeing a company act in a cult-like manner.

  Does anyone remember the Roseanne episode where the daughter's boyfriend goes to work for the "Hans the Hare" company, and it turns out to be like a cult, and Roseanne has to break him out deprogram him? Were they having a crack at Disney in that episode?

  ig.