Translated this from LinkedIn Speak to English:
I guilt-tripped my dad into buying a $1,000 knife set from my high school pyramid scheme back in 2005.
He let them rot in a drawer for two decades because he obviously didn’t want them. Now I’ve inherited them in Florida, which is the only way I was ever going to get any value out of that scam.
I was 17 and predatory enough to close a pity sale on my own father for Vector Marketing. To everyone who correctly points out that Cutco is a joke: the knives actually haven’t fallen apart yet, which is more than I can say for my dignity at the time.
Your first shitty sales job was probably a humiliating waste of time, but if you wait twenty years, you can try to spin it into a deep life lesson for engagement.
I was a Rainbow Vacuum salesman until my sleazy manager said he would accompany me to ensure that I closed my first sale, to my grandmother. My internal filter suddenly flicked off and I found myself spewing, “You are the most disgusting human being I’ve ever met, and every part of you that isn’t scum makes you seem dangerously aggressive. I can’t let you meet my grandmother, she’d never be able to look me in the eye again. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m here. My grandmother would be so disappointed in me if she knew I were associated with you. Good luck scamming someone else, I quit.” And then I walked out.
Dude didn’t even seem phased by all this. He looked like people told him this shit every day.
Then the manager clapped
The life lesson I learned in two years of inside sales in my 20’s was that I would never ever do sales ever again.
A lot of crap products are at least decent enough to not have a half life.
So what is the lesson exactly? Start your career by scamming/guilt-tripping your parents out of money? Not really sure what else I should take away from this.
that is unironically Andrew Tate’s business advice to those who pay $500/month or whatever it is to subscribe to his private Signal or Telegram channel. Make your 14 year old cousin mow lawns for you and pocket the cash.
If you can scam your parents, you can scam anyone. That’s how you know you’re cut out for sales.
there is an actual lesson even though unintentional one, your useless gifts to your relatives may come in hand in your inheritance from them, every you gift them that survives till their death may come back to you
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i learned something fun: goodwill sells kitchen knives for a dollar a pop. they’re gonna be scuffed. if you get a reversible coarse/fine whetstone, you can practice sharpening your knife. if you do a good job of sharpening your knife, it will be sharp. if you fuck it up, it was a dollar.
hope this helps.
Wow, 20 years of no use and still going strong!
20 years of no use but at least they look elegant (except that they look like shit)
The unergonomic handle design on every single knife seems like something I would actively avoid using if at all possible
The handles aren’t too bad, they’re not uncomfortable. They do feel how they look though. They’re all serrated. 100% serrated edges. I had a buddy that was all about them. Cheap knives, not horrible, but no straight edges lol.
Coincidentally, has anyone noticed how MLM and evangelicals go together?
Just like with the Republican party, religion primes the pumps, creating millions of potential marks who have already demonstrated a lack of rational thinking.
Serrated knives are GREAT if you don’t know how to care for knives because they cut better longer.
I hate serrated knives because while I’m not great at caring for my knives, I’m good enough to keep them in decent shape. :)
Holy shit, I never noticed that but you are right. Idk though many are calvinists, idk if they are all evangelical, but they are pretty much the same really.
I just commented how I know a ultra religious wacko maga lady who adores these knives.
Its just amazing how the pieces fit so clearly and they dont see it. The religious are the easiest target for grift. Zero critical thought.
At first, I thought this might have been a heartwarming post. But no, it’s sociopathic MLM nonsense.
The knives that have never been used are still going strong … hmm.
Exactly. I used to participate on BIFL on that other /r/ site. It had a difficult time of it, and I have no idea where it stands now, but it devolved into “lookit this older item I pulled out of my parents’ garage that maybe got used once a year for the last 40 years if ever and it’s still working great!!”
A well cared for knife set will last a lifetime even with normal use as long as it’s halfway decent to begin with.
Vector is a pyramid scheme. What kind of, uh, person, gets suckered into this “interview” like I did, and pays them to sell their overpriced bullshit?
I went to a vector sales seminar. After the first day the lead guy was so impressed with me i was one of 5 people he met with afterwards telling me to 10x a list of people i knew, he asked everyone else for 100 names. I knew the next day we would have to buy a $150 knife kit and likely be coerced into contacting that list to pester those people into buying knives so i slept in and skipped it. I woke up to an annoyed phone call from the chief lackey complaining that i should have attended.
I’m glad i skipped out.
Vector sent me a letter offering a $15/hr job. When I got there it turned out to be $15 per sales pitch, with driving time, lead generation time, training, and everything else unpaid. There were many other signs it was a scam. When I came back for the second day of training, I presented my evidence, but I wasn’t able to convince anyone else to leave.
least you tried, I did not show up for day two.
Privileged kids. I had a college roommate who did this and he was most definitely bankrolled by his parents. We’re talking the lazy fake draw, and calling everything he didn’t like “gay”. These are the people that will be running this country in a few years cause of nepotism.
I almost did because I was 16 and wanted a job. The voicemail I left was so atrocious. “I’m Uhh calling about the Uhh…” looks at mass mailed letter trying to figure out the job “Uhh job.” The I hit # to redo the message but that didn’t work so it just had a button press noise on the recording. They never called back.
The one I went to some late 20 year old rich kid did a presentation in an empty office, just chairs and like a table, for maybe a dozen or so of us, showed the knife cutting a penny in half, like that’s an impressive thing, they are zinc now and only copper coated, and both metals are softer than steel.
I pointed out it was a federal crime to destroy money.
The fake kind that doesn’t exist. It’s trivial to generate nonsense post likes this with genAI to the point where doing it with humans makes no financial sense.
Let me get it straight. Guy is bragging that he has sold his father set of knives for $1k that his dad didnt want or needed. The set stood there unused for 20 years. And now he brags how good it is still? Weird flex but okay…
Any knife bought today can be good 20 years later if it was unused. Even cheapo shit for $1 will be sharp 20 years later if it was laying around unopened. This would be much more impressive if his father did eventually use this set and it would be still good 20 years later. Other than that, this is cringeposting
This fucker bragging about making a sale to his dad. I wonder if he even had to pull that silver spoon out of his mouth to close.
he could replace it with one of this knife!
Probably not. These babies’ll rust up on you quicker than— close the sale, Gil, close the sale!
My dad bought a set of these on a pity sale from a friend around the same time. Christ, they’re awful. They were dull as fuck, so I bought them a Lanski sharpener thinking it was the only way they’d get fixed. Even sharpened them for him.
The Lansky sat in a drawer for years and collected dust. He said, “they have a lifetime sharpening service for free.” Which he never used, of course.
It’s fucked up, Cutco knives are actually pretty good. I have a set myself, along with some other stuff on theirs, but the MLM sales scheme is just such dogshit. It’s a weird case where it’s a good product that I absolutely would not suggest to a friend.
It’s pretty hard to fuck up a knife
There are way to many bad knives for that to be true
This is parody, I can’t believe it isn’t
Holy shit this guy spent 20 years in a pyramid scheme?
What a fucking loser.
Here’s my cutco success story I walked the fuck out of their recruitment session when I realized it wasn’t a normal ass job interview
I’m embarrassed to admit I accepted the “job” (while continuing to work my retail one) when I was young. 🤦♂️ In the “interview”, I said I would work hard, creatively find leads, interact on social media, etc, but I wouldn’t hit up my friends/family for sales. They agreed, but guess what they later wanted me to do?
Anyway, I completed the training, got my sample kit, then did exactly one demo for a relative, and asked her for contact info from her extensive network of acquaintances, as we were trained to do. They laughed and told me no. Afterwards, I felt so ashamed of myself for trying to use family for leads that I didn’t even submit the demo for payment. But I still attended a couple more of the meetings at the Cutco office. Even then, my breaking point wasn’t until they made us gather on a Saturday for an “All-Day Call Day”, where I was again pressured to cold-call family members. After that was when I finally turned in my demo set, breathed a sigh of relief, and moved on. 1 demo, zero sales, $0 earned, countless wasted hours. But at least I can always look back and cringe at myself if I ever get too big of an ego!
Demo set? When they tried to hire me (2003 maybe?), you had to start by buying a set.
Ouch, that’s shady as hell! Maybe they got slapped down in court for doing that or something? Or maybe the laws in my state are different. The demo set was very bare-bones, but it was brand-new. It included the steak knife, trimmer knife, table knife, and shears:
Edit: corrected
If I’m being honest I only handled it the way I did because I fell for another cruddy marketing scenario when I was younger
Same. They’ll literally hire anyone because the whole thing is s pyramid scheme.
