So this took place 8 ish years back. Only lasted two weeks in the job, still embarrassed how much they hooped me.
I was fresh off of a breakup, out of money, working a gig economy job on the side, when I ran into Dave.
Dave was trying to create a sales company to sell premium fire saftey equipment straight to families. It was a tough sell, “hey barely middle class family, wanna go on a 48 month loan at $250 a month for fancy smoke detectors”
I hate sales jobs, the job was advertised as a “fire saftey education job” and I was baited and switched into a sales position.
And good lord Dave wanted me to sell. He once said to me “if you're one of these people that waste my time telling me labour laws I don't want you”.
He wanted his “employees”to come in at 8 am, cold call or door knock until 4 pm, then do sales presentations as late into the evening as you could go. If you didn't make your own sales leads by 4pm, you stayed in the office until 10pm or later cold calling.
This was all unpaid. I was hired under the impression that I would be paid min wage, but part way into the second week, I learned he had no plan to pay us. 100% commission based. When I confronted him, his general argument was “people get in the way of their own greatness,, they walk away from a golden opportunity because it doesn't work for them, if you're hungry you'll sell harder and then see how good it feels to get sales, I'm trying to modivated people to see how good making sales are by making them desperate to make a sale”
Like, literally admitting to lying to people to get them in the door, and acting like he was doing them a favor in doing so.
Apparently he had been in trouble with the labour board many times, had to be forced to pay people many times, but he just continues what he's doing (that includes me, but I'll tell you that later)
He wouldn't even teach us how to sell, more just put us in a situation where we were desperate to sell. He would send us cringy modivational memes, have us listen to vauge “seize the day” lectures and presentations, instead of actually teaching us how to sell. Shallow and irrelevant “modivational media”.
Here's the fucking kicker, and for context Dave is already a multi millionair, one of those “I couldn't decide what color of brand new truck to get so I bought both” types. One of those “I take a two week vacation in Egypt every month” types
End of second week, despite no real guidance or mentoring, I had convinced a family to go with one of our higher end packages. I didn't know how to do the paperwork for the loan etc at that point, so Dave had told everyone “if you close a sale, I'll come in and do the paperwork for you to finish it”.
I never explicitly asked, but I assumed if I closed the sale, I would be paid for it. (silly me right?)
The full sales presentation is about an hour, the paperwork took about 10 mins at the end. I made the sale, I was looking at someone besides food bank food next paycheck because I actually made a sale.
Naw, just kidding, Dave took the entire commission for himself, his reason “you didn't do it on your own so you didn't earn it, when you can do it by yourself you'll earn your commission”
I was out of the door immediately. He seemed genuinely baffled I made the decision to leave after working two weeks for free then having my commission taken from me. Like, a level of upset that seems impossible, like it was a result he had no idea could occur.
He called me spoiled and ungreatful and selfish. He said I took advantage of him (he had bought me lunch once on my first day, a $6 subway sandwich), he said I was a typical lazy millennial not willing to do any hard work (and then got mad when I pointed out he was a millennial too).
Honestly I think he thought himself to be a highly intelligent puppet master Machiavellian, but he had so little self awareness that he was surprised that people he blatantly exploited wouldn't tolerate it. He's like a thief that constantly hums to himself while thinking he's the sneakiest fucker around.
I had to take him to the labour board to get paid for my two weeks (months and months later), and I never did get my commission back
I'd like to think I'm less gullible now, but if I ever became that desperate again, I may get blind enough to fall for another sociopaths buisness model.
His buisness is still going btw, and last I checked he had bought his third house, a vacation home in Greece, so that exploitative fucker is still thriving.