Vector Marketing is a company created to sell Cutco products. They work mainly by recruiting college kids to go to people's homes and hawk expensive knives. (an extension of the sales programs advertised in Boys' Life)

Here's how the whole thing works:

1. A student receives a letter promising guaranteed wages of $18.25.
2. Said student calls up for an interview, receiving the notion that it is difficult to get in.
3. The interview is a group "interview", where the district manager will give a product demonstration and ask questions with obvious answers. This interview will last about 3 hours and will take place in a hastily put together, rundown, rented office.
4. Interviewees are enticed with promises of camaraderie and lots of money.
5. Interviewees are offered positions or turned away.

To sell their product, Vector relies on their guarantee and a few other aspects as their knives are not top of the line:

• A lifetime guarantee. Any time a knife breaks, they will replace it for free.
• Their products are made in the USA
• A 4-year-old article in Consumer Digest recommending them as a manufacturer of stamped cutlery.
• Their knives don't frequently need sharpening

However, there are significant drawbacks to working at Vector.

• You are not paid $18.25 per hour, as you may believe. You are paid $18.25 for each presentation you do. These usually take less than an hour, but you are not paid for any work you do to set up these presentations, nor are you paid for your time and gas getting to and from your appointments.
• You don't go door-to-door. Instead, you ask each of your potential customers to rat out their friends who might be interested.
• You are required to buy a $400 set of knives to demonstrate everything. You receive these at a great discount and you can sell them back at retail when your employment is finished. In other words, you can make $300 just by selling back the knives and walking out. (note: I have not tried this)
• You receive commissions if people order from you. There are two pay scales: one based on pay per presentation, the other on a percentage of each order. You receive the greater of the two.
• Vector has complaints listed with the Better Business Bureau in several states.

If I post a request for deletion for this node, it's probably because I'm dead, and somebody found my laptop and went onto e2 with it.

Vector Marketing is a cult. I see, after finishing this writeup, that mkb has already had an experience with them of some sort. Whatever, here's mine.

I went there after replying to a post on Craigslist looking for salesmen - any kind of summer work, really - and made the dizzying 5 mile bike ride to their 'office.' The first thing I notice when I arrive there is that they have rented an entire office strictly for the purpose of interviewing people. The scene is arranged as such:

 ____________________________
|          |  | |      |   | |
|  ?      f|  | |    c |   |b|
|          |__| |      |   | |
|          \  | |   /  |___| |
|________   \_|_|__/   ______|
|cccccccc               |   ||
|c                      |   ||
|c                     e| q |d
|c                      |   || 
|c                      |___|| 
|rccccccc                |kk | 
|c                   |  k| 
|c                       |k  | 
|c   __            ______| tk| 
|c  | g|       \   |t t t|tt | 
|ccc|__|_____   \__|_t_t_|t_t|  

The second I enter, a girl behind a door (symbol 'f') looks at me, closes the door, and is not seen for the remainder of the time spent in the building. I look at the surroundings, which are, I think, oddly devoid of business-related materials for a business. A boy (sitting at symbol 'e'), slightly chubby with brown hair, about twenty years of age, and casually dressed, asks me if I'm here for the interview, and, after my response, tells me to put my name on the sign-in sheet (symbol 'g'), which has a clock immediately above it. He hands me a job application and asks me to fill it out, and then, following its completion, he informs me that he is just 'dropping in,' and then proceeds to go over every item of the application, asking me for more details on it, especially the 'hobbies' field. I notice a heavy array of knives ('k') and trophies ('t') on the table, evidently the only two products the company is involved in selling. Warning flag #2.

While he talks, I help myself to a look at some of the literature strewn around the table to the right of my chair (symbol 'r'). This includes several copies of 'Entertainment Weekly,' all addressed to the same *residential* address, not the business itself, and several publications released by the company itself, which include nothing but pictures of its 'employees' riding ATVs and walking around in swimsuits. At this point, things are starting to get more than a little strange. An overweight man of about 60 years of age, who identifies himself as "Carl Myers," enters the office and introduces himself to the boy sitting on the desk at symbol 'b', who wears a bright green office shirt and resembles the bulldog-looking guy from "Office Space." The older man proceeds to ask where he can sit, and then sits at the chair behind the table 'q' at symbol 'd', laying his briefcase on the desk. The bulldog-boy 'b' shakes his hand, and then retreats back into his office. The older man is then asked by the casually-dressed boy about his briefcase, to which the older man remarks, "oh, the wonders of modern plastics!" He then laughs. The younger boy knocks it and asks if it's really made of plastic, to which the older man responds that it was made specially for him by an architect friend of his, which he describes in the form of a rambling story.

The bulldog boy asks me into his office, and asks me less than a dozen vague questions of the broadest job interview type ("what do you think your strengths are?" and so on). He then tells me that he can't see a reason that I wouldn't be fit to continue the interview process, which will continue for 3 to 4 hours later during that day, at which point he tells me to go sit in the main lobby. He then invites the older man into his office, and the younger boy has disappeared. I am now alone in the main room of the office, and again review the literature available, which, as I now notice, contains not only pictures of young people in swim suits, but testimony that their experience at the company "gave them the skills necessary to run their own company within a year." At this point I gather my things and leave, fully convinced that this is the most frightening experience I've ever had, and walk down the hall to the exit, then finding that there is a note taped to my bike, actually printed out from a computer saying, "Please don't ruin the flowers with your bike." My bike is not actually placed on top of the flowers, so I take out my pen and write, "Please do not waste an entire sheet of paper to leave pointless, bitchy notes on my bike."

Then I went home and verified that this company was, in fact, somewhere between a cult and a pyramid scheme - and not only a local pyramid scheme, of course, but a national pyramid scheme. From my experiences researching the company (after my interview - a mistake, I now realize, as I should have done it before), I fully expect that a reply will be made to this writeup, on a newly registered account, saying that the company isn't that bad, but that I just didn't have what it took to work for them. Possibly I will get threatening phone calls for writing it. Whatever.

I have speculated about this company heavily after the experience itself. The strangest parts were that the company, despite a shitload of available complaints, had a score of "A-" with the Better Business Bureau, displayed their logo within their 'office,' and had no listed complaints on their website pertaining to them - indicating either an incredible amount of laziness on the part of the BBB, or an incredible amount of corruption. The girl, who I had no interaction with besides for recruitment itself, seemed to be hired strictly to make such phone calls, and to give the appearance of youth at the business, or attract male victims. The old man, who exuded an incredible "Death of a Salesman" aura, was either at the point in his life where he was reduced to applying for jobs at pyramid schemes, or a part of the scam itself, hired to give the impression that he was a reputable businessman - a part that he played like a bad actor. The literature itself seemed to only present the impression that the company would make you successful and surrounded with scantily clad women. The experience, as a whole, was like wrestling my way out of a spider's web - after I walked out, I discover, naturally, that you are required to put down a sizeable deposit, and are paid about 3 dollars an hour based on commissions (not the advertised 16). Terrifying, what's happening to America. Gets more Orwellian by the hour.