Chapter One
The Art of Selling Dreams
Do you remember Amway? Of course you do, virtually everyone I know has had some kind of brush with it. What was interesting about it, apart from the fact that it had me frothing with excitement over an effing bar of soap, was that a certain life-long atheist friend of mine became involved with it. It seemed the more he immersed himself into this murky world of soft-soap products the more his mental equilibrium became critically affected. I suppose it could’ve been worse, Britway, imagine that, there wouldn’t even be a product to sell, you’d just get a large bill for bugger-all basically, this phenomenon is known in the UK as a Council Tax bill.
The thing is with Amway though in the end it wasn’t so much about the products themselves as about selling the idea of Amway; that is selling tapes and books on the various methods required to dupe people into signing up. At that point it became a sort of religion for some people, much like this Alpha course business. I got invited to one of those too, pffffffff. I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so desperate that they seek the answers to life and the universe from what is essentially a glorified vacuum cleaner salesman. If someone has faith brought about by a personal divine experience, fine, but don’t tell me any kind of faith or belief can come about by persuasion in this form…It’s a very slippery way of catching the vulnerable if you ask me.
I am reminded of when I spotted an advert in the local news rag, which was obviously a complete con that I fell for hook, line and sinker. The advert itself was for an auction and gave an example of the prices such as ‘camcorders for £5 and computers for £15 etc. Anyway I turned up at this alleged auction with a couple of friends. Greeting us at the doorway were a couple of security guards. Anyway after a brief altercation with said guards along the lines of ‘what the fuck’s this all about then’, we were all herded inside and the main doors were locked behind us. We then walked through another doorway and were confronted with, well a mountain of crap basically, old faulty electrical goods etc. Of course we were unaware of this at the time; anyway this gutter-snipe slurps onto this make-shift stage and begins the auction. He began by telling us that everything had to go, at no matter what price! Then there was some confusion when suddenly he jumped in the air and shouted..
“GIVE THAT WOMAN A CAMCORDER!!!!! this woman was obviously his mother but the excitement generated was unbelievable, especially when he said right who else want’s one?
Now I regard myself as reasonably street-wise but even I at one point had my hand in the air for no apparent reason. A friend said “what the ffff are you doing? I replied, I dunno!! I just want one!! Oh no, the Higg brain had been infected with consumerism…Thankfully sense prevailed and I came away from it financially unscathed. Unfortunately many who attended this auction did not fare so well and came away with not only some very useless and outdated stuff but severely pillaged wallets.
Then there’s Insurance, what was it? The Combined Insurance Company of America. I got roped/press-ganged into that too for a very short while. I’m going back quite a few years here. Advice; if you suspect hard times around the corner, ditch the woman, or man as the case maybe, immediately! Do not hesitate otherwise the consequences could well have an impact on your very existence, no no no, they WILL have an impact. I’m absolutely ashamed to admit this but I was more or less forced into signing up for this and I actually attended a two-week course in York on how to trick people into forking-out hard earned money for something they themselves will never actually benefit from. This is because the ‘Life Policy’ only shells-out when you die and just covers basic funeral expenses. Fuck me; it would’ve been easier to sell a skip full of heroin to the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. Needless to say I did not sell a single policy! Needless to say, I sound like Alan Partridge, actually there was talk of doing an Allied Dunbar but thank god I managed to escape!!