I didn’t think it would happen to me. I thought I had distanced myself from these people. I was wrong. Last night a girl from high school tried to rope me into a pyramid scheme selling overpriced kitchen knives.

My story:

It started with a rather innocuous text from someone named Bethany. “So-in-so” spoke highly of me and said I’d be a good fit for a new job. No description of the job itself or even the vein of industry I’d be entering. Just a link to a website that was word jumble LLC.

(I haven’t seen high school girl in 7 years, we weren’t close, no clue how she has my digits, so that’s a huge plothole right there.) Morbid curiosity kills the cat. I hit the link & filled out a vague questionnaire about my personality and whether I liked talking to strangers.

Almost immediately the “Chicago Lincoln Park manager” emails me with info about a job interview. I ignore. Then “Katie” triple texts me over the course of 3 days. I googled the Chicago manager and he’s a kid who just graduated U of I and posts on Instagram about his journey

At this point, NO ONE is explaining what the job actually is. A simple google search shows the biz is a sales company contracted by Cutco. The entire gig is mining kids’ personal connections to sell $1000 knives. “No cold calling or door knocks” = trolling rich family/friends

Amused, I hit up my high school besties to fill them in. YALL. They all got the texts, too! There could be hundreds of BHSS grads roped in at this point. I know our hometown doesn’t have THAT many prospective Cutco knife owners. I just... how do people fall for this crap?

Anyway. Beware. It happened to me. It could happen to you.

Also. The Glassdoor Reviews for this company are a trip: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Vector-Marketing/reviews?fcountry=US&floc=Chicago%2C+IL

Epilogue: This is the first time I’ve had a high school person hit me up to join a company. But this isn’t the first time I’ve been approached to join an MLM. The first time was a girl at the Starbucks at Milwaukee/Damen/North in Wicker Park. I was working, filing a story ...

... when she asked me to watch her coffee. I said sure. She returned to her seat next to me. Asked what I was working on. I said work. She asked me what kind. I said journalism. She asked if I was happy. ..... Then she told me I could be happy if I learned her business secrets.

EDIT: the initial text didn’t come last night, things just escalated last night when I got the most aggressive text from “Katie” and the original hs girl called and hit up a fuckton of other people lol