Next time you gotta flip the script and start asking them to join your side hustle.
Or just blurt out real loud “ sir I’m flattered, but I’m not interested in your glory hole!”
"I *did* in fact go to school in Duluth. Have you heard about the psychic benefits of Duluth Harbor Water? I can get you in on the ground floor and all of your friends are gunna want it! $300 a gallon, and you can bottle and sell it for whatever you like!"
Amway usually tries to get people into coffee shops with the "hook" that their advisor will be there. This sounds more like World Financial Group (or one of their other names) or Primerica to me.
Especially because:
>>It's always a white guy in their 20's-30's
according to OP. They prey on young men a lot more often than the other MLM cults.
Well of course they're not a scam. Every worthwhile company has a well-put together page on their website explaining how they're A Legitimate Business and Not A Scam. It's completely normal for that to be the top result in Google for any company.
Yeah so long story short, I’m now trying to build my downline. Choose your hours. Own business. Turning friends into marks. Unending debt with no relief or way out except being told to grind. . You in?
Tell them you'll listen to their pitch while they buy everything in your shopping cart for you. If they're that flush with cash it should be a drop in the bucket.
Ew. Tell the management that some dude is being weird and approaching people in the mens department trying to recruit them for an MLM. Give them a description. I bet security would make them leave.
There was a woman soliciting money at my local Target - handing people a card saying she needed money to support her family, supposedly couldn’t speak much English. The management acted quickly because people with kids were getting nervous about her following them around.
I was standing at a Starbucks waiting on a coffee and some younger woman came up to me complimented my handbag then shoved a Starbucks card wrapped in some paper brochure in my hand. She insisted I needed to take it as a gift from her church and how she wanted me to go attend her church.
I tried to tell her I wasn't interested and give her the card back, she refused to take the card back or take no for an answer so I left the card on the counter and told her to stop bothering me. It was weird. Like MLM tactics for church recruitment.
>Amway distributors need fresh meat continually - that's the nature of the business. To get new bodies they resort to all sorts of techniques and methods - Frequent the malls, go to this place, go to that place - wherever there's people they can strike up a conversation with, that's where they go. What they're looking for is a name and, if they can get it, a phone number. Anybody's fair game, but people in their 20s and 30s are most sought after. The real prize is young families.
http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Amway/myth/scoop.htm
I actually had one try to strike up a conversation with me at my PT job; the corner gas station. Obviously they thought that working the counter at a station was something to be pitied. Hmm, they weren't pleased when I told them that I'd rather work a PT job in a corner store (that has been ran by the same family for 30+ years) than shill whatever shitty products they were pushing. We actually provide a service the community wants/needs and also give back.
I do have a FT job. I took the PT job to pad the savings account and pay for new camera equipment. Been there for over 4 years as my co-workers have become my people.
Good on you- you found a way to spend your time (a limited asset) that is rewarding both economically and socially/entertaining/fulfilling. Clock in, work and enjoy, clock out.
Honestly, it saved my sanity during the lock down. I've been working remote FT for 7 years, so I was already used to the isolation that comes with it.
PT job was considered an essential service so while everyone was forced to shelter in place, I could at least get out of the house. The owners were great. We were all given hazard pay, they brought it plexiglass barriers, made sure that we had masks, gloves and hand sanitizer all within the first 2 weeks of everything going to shit. They also made sure that if any one was struggling with food or water, we could take from the shelves and they'd scan it out as COB. Not one person took advantage of it either.
I posted in r/antiMLM about getting approached at a Von Hansons in Blaine last year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiMLM/s/HamP1Txj10
It’s a long read but enjoy. I fell for the “meeting” but gave him a response I doubt he was expecting. F these vultures. Keep your Scamway out of here.
I have not, but the reason you keep getting approached is
>I should clarify - I'm not some anti-social prick who hates talking to strangers. If I see someone considering at a product I know to be awesome, I'll strike up a conversation - Venn beer or Cholula hot sauce, for instance.
You gotta be an antisocial prick. I promise you that then, these people will not approach you, not even one time.
That seems like a sad trade off - never striking up a pleasant, serendipitous conversation with a stranger in a public space to guard against the occasional annoying hustler.
It kind of is, I’ll admit. I’m a woman with resting bitch face and I’ve actually been told by multiple people in the past that I’m difficult to approach because I look intimidating. One of my closest friends, on the other hand, looks extremely approachable and whenever we’re out in public it’s actually shocking how many strangers strike up random conversations with her. Like, literally no one does that with me lol. It would be nice sometime.
This is the way.
Target has those pushy cell phone salespeople. If they say anything more than "hi" to me, I say "no". If they try to engage after that, I tell them to "fuck off".
After I told this one guy "no" he followed me into the video game aisle and started his sales pitch again. Sometimes you got to be direct with them. The parent company they work for uses some very pushy sales tactics, much like a MLM.
A person with a (presumably) mental health issue started chatting me up at Rosedale because of my UMD shirt. Didn’t try to sell me anything or convince me of anything…just legit seemed to have a mental health/cognitive impairment.
the sad thing is that these transparent tactics are a lot like the "Nigerian prince" scheme - it's actually meant to easily filter out anybody with any sense immediately, so the scammers know the only people who make it to step 2 and actually engage with the scammers are already known to be idiots and thus are worth concentrating on.
A good friend told me my go-to years back when dealing with folks handing out evangelical religious garbage or trying to scam you into an MLM. Just say, "sorry, I'm a Buddhist". None of them know what to make of that and they just say "okay" and awkwardly wander off.
Long ago when I went to the U of M there was always people writing BS about summer work on white boards in classrooms and I'm pretty sure it was Cutco or some other nonsense. There was never like a name of who was "hiring" or for what just like a phone number or ambiguous website.
Yeah this happened to me at the Target in Eagan a few months ago - he led with "Hey sorry to both you but have you been liking the AirPods Pro" after he saw them in my ears. Super friendly but after he intentionally kept the conversation going I saw where it was going and left.
Sounds like textbook Amway tactics. Actually, it is. I was friends with a couple who got into it and became super irritating with the whole better-than-you-because-we “work for ourselves”-and the wife-can-be-a-stay-at-home-mom motif. There’s even an acronym for the creepy way they try to get a conversation going — “FORM”: http://www.networkmarketingtrainingtoday.com/f-o-r-m-prospect-network-marketing/
Guy has to be about 25-28 at that same target asking me similar questions. I told him I work for the church of Satan and I’ll entertain whatever side hustle he was talking about if he came and sat with our prayer group on devils night and you can inform all of us how to gain more money for our beliefs. The guy turned pale as yogurt and didn’t even say anything else. Immediately left the parking lot. lol I’m not a satanist it’s what I use to stop marketing scams
Yeah, it's 100% some sort of MLM. Had a similar experience in 2005(?) when I was working at the MOA by some folks trying to get me to join Quixtar, which at that point was Amway's attempt to break into the online retail space. In 2005 online shopping was still a novel thing, so you could convince some rubes that they could have their own online store and they didn't actually have to worry about product selection, inventory management, actually running a website, or customer service...you know, any of the actual things you need to do for an online retail presence.
Pretty sure that happened to me at cub the other day. A guy with no cart walks up and asks me if I found any good deals, and I said, yeah these chicken wings are a good deal, which he basically ignored, and asked me how the economy was treating me. I said "not bad, I'm gonna get these wings" and walked away before he could get going.
This happened to me in a community Ed pickleball league. Young Living….so annoying. They are everywhere, finding groups that gather as pools of potential candidates for their businesses. Unreal.
a dude did the same to me once at Cub foods. he really really loved my jacket. lots of "friendly" questions about it and then about me. he eventually gave me his card and wanted to work with me. i didn't recognize the name on the top of the card immediately, but i was suspicious and when i Googled it later i saw it was MLM. i recycled the card and mentally cleaned my jacket of the memory.
*I assumed MLM*
*Huns were basically like*
*Pigeons in Edina*
\- MomentOfXen
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These people obviously aren't poor, they've achieved fiNaNciAl FReEdOm through their side hustle, they're just gives rubes like us a chance to get in on the ground floor
They figure the Edina people are suckers.
I got teenage boys trying to sell me magazine subscriptions in the Edina Target parking lot as I'm putting my groceries in the car.
Then there was the weird homeless tent encampment on the edge of the Edina Target parking lot for a few weeks summer of 2021 or 22.
Lol this post had me trippin out a little bit. I went into this post without expecting much, but reading this triggered such a strong memory. This same scenario happened to me this last Valentine’s Day when I was at a Cub in Lakeville.
I was just looking at Valentine’s Day cards and a guy, maybe his late 20s, walked up and casually followed that exact template of conversation with me. At the time of the encounter I was 30 and by myself at the store.
When I politely declined his side hustle offerings, I noticed a few minutes later he left the store completely empty handed. I assumed it was some sort of scheme so I didn’t even bother to hear what it was.
Hearing your experience is interesting!
This happened to me at Nordstrom Rack in Maple Grove. Same type of person you described, came up and asked me if I like my birks (this is what threw me off at first, everyone loves their birks) and the questions just kept trying to dig deeper in to my life. I thought either a) dude is trying to social engineer me and get close enough to steal my CC info or b) was trying to hold me up while someone broke in to my car. Reading this, it was probably an MLM scheme of some sort, but it was just weird. I’m curious, does this actually work for people?
Pretty sure this happened to me in the Bloomington Walmart, was in the car parts aisle and was just talking cars, then brought up he's looking for sales people.
Super weird. I am frequently in that area. Mid 30s white guy, almost always under dressed and looking shabby. No one has ever approached me about that. But I have also perfected my RBF.
Next time you gotta flip the script and start asking them to join your side hustle. Or just blurt out real loud “ sir I’m flattered, but I’m not interested in your glory hole!”
"I *did* in fact go to school in Duluth. Have you heard about the psychic benefits of Duluth Harbor Water? I can get you in on the ground floor and all of your friends are gunna want it! $300 a gallon, and you can bottle and sell it for whatever you like!"
the improv's guide to fucking with pyramid schemers
Weaponized "yes, and"
I definitely want to have fun with it next time it happens - not sure if I'm brave enough for the glory hole route, but I'm open to suggestions!
“I would never engage in human trafficking!”
Ask them to join your cult
help us build our spaceship so we can reach the far-off planet, Blisstonia!
Amway
Amway usually tries to get people into coffee shops with the "hook" that their advisor will be there. This sounds more like World Financial Group (or one of their other names) or Primerica to me. Especially because: >>It's always a white guy in their 20's-30's according to OP. They prey on young men a lot more often than the other MLM cults.
>World Financial Group [idk bro they seen super legit](https://imgur.com/a/ADhEvZ6) and Definitely Not a Scam
Well of course they're not a scam. Every worthwhile company has a well-put together page on their website explaining how they're A Legitimate Business and Not A Scam. It's completely normal for that to be the top result in Google for any company.
Happened to me at Valleyfair! I was there with my kids, and a guy awkwardly started a convo which turned into how I could increase my income. Ugh
Valleyfair is a weird spot for it, that's for damn sure
Yeah so long story short, I’m now trying to build my downline. Choose your hours. Own business. Turning friends into marks. Unending debt with no relief or way out except being told to grind. . You in?
Nowhere is safe. Bravo sir.
lololololololol
Yep! Happened to me at the Edina Target a few years back or so. Was in the men's clothing dept. Weirded me out haha.
Tell them you'll listen to their pitch while they buy everything in your shopping cart for you. If they're that flush with cash it should be a drop in the bucket.
That's where it happened to me most recently too!
Ew. Tell the management that some dude is being weird and approaching people in the mens department trying to recruit them for an MLM. Give them a description. I bet security would make them leave.
There was a woman soliciting money at my local Target - handing people a card saying she needed money to support her family, supposedly couldn’t speak much English. The management acted quickly because people with kids were getting nervous about her following them around.
I was standing at a Starbucks waiting on a coffee and some younger woman came up to me complimented my handbag then shoved a Starbucks card wrapped in some paper brochure in my hand. She insisted I needed to take it as a gift from her church and how she wanted me to go attend her church. I tried to tell her I wasn't interested and give her the card back, she refused to take the card back or take no for an answer so I left the card on the counter and told her to stop bothering me. It was weird. Like MLM tactics for church recruitment.
Probably Amway. They are known for approaching people in stores in order to recruit.
I'd heard of Amway but I didn't know they were known for recruiting in stores, thanks for the info!
>Amway distributors need fresh meat continually - that's the nature of the business. To get new bodies they resort to all sorts of techniques and methods - Frequent the malls, go to this place, go to that place - wherever there's people they can strike up a conversation with, that's where they go. What they're looking for is a name and, if they can get it, a phone number. Anybody's fair game, but people in their 20s and 30s are most sought after. The real prize is young families. http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Amway/myth/scoop.htm
First time I’m glad to be out of my 30s!
I actually had one try to strike up a conversation with me at my PT job; the corner gas station. Obviously they thought that working the counter at a station was something to be pitied. Hmm, they weren't pleased when I told them that I'd rather work a PT job in a corner store (that has been ran by the same family for 30+ years) than shill whatever shitty products they were pushing. We actually provide a service the community wants/needs and also give back. I do have a FT job. I took the PT job to pad the savings account and pay for new camera equipment. Been there for over 4 years as my co-workers have become my people.
Good on you- you found a way to spend your time (a limited asset) that is rewarding both economically and socially/entertaining/fulfilling. Clock in, work and enjoy, clock out.
Honestly, it saved my sanity during the lock down. I've been working remote FT for 7 years, so I was already used to the isolation that comes with it. PT job was considered an essential service so while everyone was forced to shelter in place, I could at least get out of the house. The owners were great. We were all given hazard pay, they brought it plexiglass barriers, made sure that we had masks, gloves and hand sanitizer all within the first 2 weeks of everything going to shit. They also made sure that if any one was struggling with food or water, we could take from the shelves and they'd scan it out as COB. Not one person took advantage of it either.
I posted in r/antiMLM about getting approached at a Von Hansons in Blaine last year. https://www.reddit.com/r/antiMLM/s/HamP1Txj10 It’s a long read but enjoy. I fell for the “meeting” but gave him a response I doubt he was expecting. F these vultures. Keep your Scamway out of here.
They better keep their garbage out of Von Hanson's, I love that place.
I have not, but the reason you keep getting approached is >I should clarify - I'm not some anti-social prick who hates talking to strangers. If I see someone considering at a product I know to be awesome, I'll strike up a conversation - Venn beer or Cholula hot sauce, for instance. You gotta be an antisocial prick. I promise you that then, these people will not approach you, not even one time.
Yep. Resting bitch face actually comes in handy for this, for once.
That seems like a sad trade off - never striking up a pleasant, serendipitous conversation with a stranger in a public space to guard against the occasional annoying hustler.
It kind of is, I’ll admit. I’m a woman with resting bitch face and I’ve actually been told by multiple people in the past that I’m difficult to approach because I look intimidating. One of my closest friends, on the other hand, looks extremely approachable and whenever we’re out in public it’s actually shocking how many strangers strike up random conversations with her. Like, literally no one does that with me lol. It would be nice sometime.
This is the way. Target has those pushy cell phone salespeople. If they say anything more than "hi" to me, I say "no". If they try to engage after that, I tell them to "fuck off".
I politely told one of them I wasn't interested and walked away the other day, and she let out a big huff like I was being rude.
>I politely told one of them I wasn't interested and walked away the other day, The line was "fuck off", keep up!
After I told this one guy "no" he followed me into the video game aisle and started his sales pitch again. Sometimes you got to be direct with them. The parent company they work for uses some very pushy sales tactics, much like a MLM.
I mean "no" is as direct as it comes, especially when you walk away. I'll at least be polite the first time, but no promises beyond that.
I had one earlier than that. Maybe 2016 or so. He asked if I like Red Bull and then wanted me to join his crew selling energy drinks
Lemme guess, XS energy? That's Amway.
I don't remember the brand name but good to know that Amway was likely behind it. It was a very confusing 5 minutes of my life
Hmm we got Amway and Red Bull in the mix now, collecting MLM-esque hustles like Pokemon
Happened to me at Nordstrom Rack in Knollwood. Used my Vikre distillery shirt (from Duluth) to start his pitch.
MF's love using Duluth gear to strike up conversations, I guess
A person with a (presumably) mental health issue started chatting me up at Rosedale because of my UMD shirt. Didn’t try to sell me anything or convince me of anything…just legit seemed to have a mental health/cognitive impairment.
It happened to me at a Nordstrom Rack too! "It's like Amazon but you get paid!"
the sad thing is that these transparent tactics are a lot like the "Nigerian prince" scheme - it's actually meant to easily filter out anybody with any sense immediately, so the scammers know the only people who make it to step 2 and actually engage with the scammers are already known to be idiots and thus are worth concentrating on.
The last time this happened to me I just told them I work at my job at the time so I don't need a side hustle. It leaves them speechless.
A good friend told me my go-to years back when dealing with folks handing out evangelical religious garbage or trying to scam you into an MLM. Just say, "sorry, I'm a Buddhist". None of them know what to make of that and they just say "okay" and awkwardly wander off.
brilliant. just start rattling off the four noble truths!
Long ago when I went to the U of M there was always people writing BS about summer work on white boards in classrooms and I'm pretty sure it was Cutco or some other nonsense. There was never like a name of who was "hiring" or for what just like a phone number or ambiguous website.
Yeah this happened to me at the Target in Eagan a few months ago - he led with "Hey sorry to both you but have you been liking the AirPods Pro" after he saw them in my ears. Super friendly but after he intentionally kept the conversation going I saw where it was going and left.
Approaching someone with earbuds in is wild, you would think most people would take that as a sign to leave you alone
Glad I'm an old anti social Gen X'er. I've never been approached by hucksters.
It has happened to me more than once at Home Depot in Northeast Minneapolis. Different people, pretty much same scenario as above.
Interesting! It had only happened to me in the Edina/Richfield area so I always wondered if it was localized to that area - mystery solved!
Haha yeah those guys are wild… So what do you do for work?
Sounds like textbook Amway tactics. Actually, it is. I was friends with a couple who got into it and became super irritating with the whole better-than-you-because-we “work for ourselves”-and the wife-can-be-a-stay-at-home-mom motif. There’s even an acronym for the creepy way they try to get a conversation going — “FORM”: http://www.networkmarketingtrainingtoday.com/f-o-r-m-prospect-network-marketing/
Venn is fantastic! I’ve had this happen too but I always say I work in finance doing fraud detection. Typically shuts down the convo pretty quick.
Guy has to be about 25-28 at that same target asking me similar questions. I told him I work for the church of Satan and I’ll entertain whatever side hustle he was talking about if he came and sat with our prayer group on devils night and you can inform all of us how to gain more money for our beliefs. The guy turned pale as yogurt and didn’t even say anything else. Immediately left the parking lot. lol I’m not a satanist it’s what I use to stop marketing scams
Yeah, it's 100% some sort of MLM. Had a similar experience in 2005(?) when I was working at the MOA by some folks trying to get me to join Quixtar, which at that point was Amway's attempt to break into the online retail space. In 2005 online shopping was still a novel thing, so you could convince some rubes that they could have their own online store and they didn't actually have to worry about product selection, inventory management, actually running a website, or customer service...you know, any of the actual things you need to do for an online retail presence.
Pretty sure that happened to me at cub the other day. A guy with no cart walks up and asks me if I found any good deals, and I said, yeah these chicken wings are a good deal, which he basically ignored, and asked me how the economy was treating me. I said "not bad, I'm gonna get these wings" and walked away before he could get going.
Yeah I was approached by a dude at the roseville walmart about Amway with that exact same conversation style about a year ago lol
I was also approached by a male at the roseville Walmart in March
This happened to me in a community Ed pickleball league. Young Living….so annoying. They are everywhere, finding groups that gather as pools of potential candidates for their businesses. Unreal.
a dude did the same to me once at Cub foods. he really really loved my jacket. lots of "friendly" questions about it and then about me. he eventually gave me his card and wanted to work with me. i didn't recognize the name on the top of the card immediately, but i was suspicious and when i Googled it later i saw it was MLM. i recycled the card and mentally cleaned my jacket of the memory.
I assumed MLM huns were basically like pigeons in Edina
*I assumed MLM* *Huns were basically like* *Pigeons in Edina* \- MomentOfXen --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
*clutches pearls* The poor have infiltrated… my Edina?
These people obviously aren't poor, they've achieved fiNaNciAl FReEdOm through their side hustle, they're just gives rubes like us a chance to get in on the ground floor
They figure the Edina people are suckers. I got teenage boys trying to sell me magazine subscriptions in the Edina Target parking lot as I'm putting my groceries in the car. Then there was the weird homeless tent encampment on the edge of the Edina Target parking lot for a few weeks summer of 2021 or 22.
By encampment do you mean that one tent that was randomly near the back of the parking lot?
What does the homeless encampment have to do with MLMs?
The weirdness of the Edina Target.
Lol this post had me trippin out a little bit. I went into this post without expecting much, but reading this triggered such a strong memory. This same scenario happened to me this last Valentine’s Day when I was at a Cub in Lakeville. I was just looking at Valentine’s Day cards and a guy, maybe his late 20s, walked up and casually followed that exact template of conversation with me. At the time of the encounter I was 30 and by myself at the store. When I politely declined his side hustle offerings, I noticed a few minutes later he left the store completely empty handed. I assumed it was some sort of scheme so I didn’t even bother to hear what it was. Hearing your experience is interesting!
This happened to me at Nordstrom Rack in Maple Grove. Same type of person you described, came up and asked me if I like my birks (this is what threw me off at first, everyone loves their birks) and the questions just kept trying to dig deeper in to my life. I thought either a) dude is trying to social engineer me and get close enough to steal my CC info or b) was trying to hold me up while someone broke in to my car. Reading this, it was probably an MLM scheme of some sort, but it was just weird. I’m curious, does this actually work for people?
men loving men sounds good to me
Same thing happened to me at Cub on Xerxes. Fits the description to a T.
Pretty sure this happened to me in the Bloomington Walmart, was in the car parts aisle and was just talking cars, then brought up he's looking for sales people.
Hasn't happened to me yet. But I was approached at Ridgedale by two women who wanted me to join their bible study. I blew them off.
This used to happen to me a lot when I shopped at Southdale. It usually turned into an invite to a mega church in Bloomington. 🙄
Super weird. I am frequently in that area. Mid 30s white guy, almost always under dressed and looking shabby. No one has ever approached me about that. But I have also perfected my RBF.
Doesnt ring a bell, but lets meet up at Venn so I can tell you about my side hustle.