Confession time...
I used to play a part in the cheap tat racket. I am not proud.

When I was 16, I was - briefly - employed as a Betterware distributor. My patch was quite large, and covered a chunk of one of the wealthier suburbs of town, and a chunk of one of the poorer. Inevitably, the buyers tended to come from the poorer parts. In effect, then, my job description was to hawk rubbish to the vulnerable.

If there is anything reassuring about this, it's that my life was made a misery by the experience, so I paid my moral dues. My routine would be to come home from school, grab something to eat, distribute some catalogues and goods, pick up other catalogues and orders, sort out orders, go to bed, get up, go to school. The spare room became a warehouse for plastic nonsense and, being 16, I was often reliant on my parents' goodwill and car to get the orders to people's houses.

The reward? Don't be silly. Notwithstanding the rubbish the buying of which keeps the poor in their places, I was paid on commission only - and this frequently meant about £20 for working every single spare hour of the week. Most weeks - when I was concentrating on the wealthier parts of my patch - I sold nothing, therefore earned nothing; a couple of times, I knew that the item I was delivering was not what the customer thought she had ordered but, being skint and truly fucked off, did nothing about it. (I remember one family in particular: they were immigrants, and their English was not good. What I delivered was clearly undesired, but I was too inflexible to take it back and exchange it for the cheaper item they did want. Why? Because they were my only sale that week, and represented £2 to me. I was not going to defer a smaller commission for the fortnight it would take to sort out matters.) After I took my commission, my area manager took his; factor into that Betterware's own profit, and you have an idea of the quality of the tat I sold.

Most Betterware distributors lack real jobs, and therefore have the time really to work their patch. Maybe they make a decent living from it. I doubt it, though. Whenever I get a catalogue now, I'm torn between buying something just out of a sense of solidarity with the mug who pushed the brochure through my door, and not buying anything because (a) there's nothing I need and (b) not buying anything increases the likelihood that the whole pernicious enterprise will collapse all the sooner. Not buying anything invariably wins.

When I am king, Betterware better beware.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 14:16, 2 replies)

My dad used to do a Betterware round
Actually, he might still do it. Along with about 5 other jobs to make ends meet. Following his sacking in Saudi for wearing shorts in a bar, he vowed he would never take orders from anyone again. Which is fine, but he doesn't drive, so a Betterware round is possibly not the best option when you're covering an area of around 6 square miles...

I refer to his self employment as selling crap to people who can't afford to pay him for it.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 14:53, closed)

Betterware
God my sister loves Betterware.
Actually no, its Lakeland Plastics. Is that the middle class version? I hope so.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 16:26, closed)