It sucked.
Sort of mildly on topic. Many years ago I found myself with about twenty others in a room being harangued by a lad who wished fervently that we would help him sell vacuum cleaners. I won't say the brand but it shares its name with a Nintendo character who looks like a pink ball.

The lad spent over half an hour telling us how much money we'd make selling these infernal bastards door-to-door. He then told us at length about the car he'd bought with his earnings. A Mercedes 190 automatic. As if I could ever forget. Finally, he whipped us into a frenzy of Mammon-based greed and suggested that those who didn't want untold wealth and/or a car which looked like it belonged to our Dad should leave now, and let the ambitious, fast-track-to-success winners stay.

En masse we all left, apart from one girl. As we shuffled away down the corridor, we heard him telling her that once you've sat on a heated German leather seat, you never go back.
(judgetheobscure used to sweep in butchers' shops., Thu 7 Jul 2011, 17:29, 6 replies)

my mate
signed up to sell their cleaners once when he was on his uni summer holidays. Said that each morning they all had to get together to sing the company "motivational" anthem. I forget how it went but it was VERY wanky. He quit before he'd earned a penny. He also demo'd the cleaner at my house, and I have to say even as a 20 year old chap I found it very impressive.
(Freak Paw, Thu 7 Jul 2011, 18:35, closed)

I did that for a while, circa 1991.
Ended up being sidetracked into maintenance/repair of same devices. Was a bit less dishonest than full-on commission sales, but cleaning the fan enclosure of a pub vacuum (which had been hoovering up puke, beer and dead skin cells for the last year or so) was an exercise in repulsion.

Ended up leaving there and spending four delicious years on the dole.
(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Thu 7 Jul 2011, 19:27, closed)

Weirdly
I think said vacuums are quite effective. But the sales technique comes straight from Stalin. Or someone. Sorry - it's drunk and I'm late.
(judgetheobscure used to sweep in butchers' shops., Thu 7 Jul 2011, 23:32, closed)

Lovely company...
I went along to one of their recruitment days as well not knowing what the product was and they refused to mention what it was until they had a room full of people filling in an application form. Yes we all got up and walked out at the mention of door to door vacuum sales too!

Later on I worked for a company who had the same vacuum company in an office underneath them for a while (they move alot)and apparently they used to sing motivational songs in the morning before piling out the door to harass gullible householders.
(cmouse is pondering about life in other jobs, Fri 8 Jul 2011, 10:10, closed)

Me too
The above sounds familiar.
In the early nineties, I was young and unemployed. I saw an advert in the paper that said “new factory opening”, and I thought what the hell. I called the number, and was immediately invited to an interview… strangely this was to take place in a bungalow a hundred yards from my house.

So I put on my one and only suit, and went down there.

It turned out to be door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales. Being a dapper eighteen year old in my nice suit, I looked the part, and I was offered the job there and then.

As I was sitting there, a lady at a desk was cold calling people, obviously OAPs, and trying to get them to have their vacuum cleaners serviced. Just listening to the spiel made me feel ill. I looked up and there was a poster on the wall, which showed numerous awards you could win within the company for flogging this crap. I think they were little lapel badges. There must have been forty of them, but the one I remember was “The Golden Telephone”.

I told them I’d think about it. I went home and continued to live on £35 a week income support for some time.
(Bob the Builder killed Captain Alex, Sat 9 Jul 2011, 22:42, closed)

You've got a point about the heated leather seats though...

( notmyrealname, Sun 10 Jul 2011, 18:18, closed)