No Means I Need More Information

This woman was almost friends with a Mary Kay consultant. Except the consultant couldn’t stop from trying to recruit her. Even after she said no… and no… and no… and no….

I came here more than a year ago after a potential “friend,” the daughter of a neighbor, approached me with a veiled offer of friendship. She worked at the local grocery store as a checker and I would chat with her when I came through her line. I would often go to her line even if they had more customers just to greet her and chat.

This woman eventually treated me to lunch. We talked about our mutual love of pets, etc. and we both ended up complaining about our husbands and wept about the loss of beloved cats and dogs, a woman-to-woman exchange. In the meantime, she was on a Mary Kay roll. She passed out MK business cards to customers in her grocery line I saw her chat up customers and hand them cards, and wore her MK badge over her work tag. I even fell for the “oh, your badge is upside down” trick. Eventually the badge came off as I am sure her supervisors told her to take it off.

Then–WHAM–she hit me with a script. She needed “help” from a woman to “model” some cosmetics. I knew it for what it was: she was trying to snare me as one of her down-line in an MLM. I politely declined.

I saw her lipstick red Cruze parked in front of her mother’s house, the windows plastered with MK stickers. I guess she was on the road to directorship.

Then came the layering. She’d text me about three times a week, saying if I did not want to buy or sell, maybe I would give her the names of family and friends. I was disgusted. It was this reason or that reason; she was in a contest; she needed more women to buy or sell; whatever. I felt used and insulted. I told her not to text me any more. She’d stop for a while, and then resume the calls and texts, say she had special “offers,” and she did not want me to “miss out.”

Then there was a text at 6:30 in the morning when I was still in bed asleep. The only person who texts me at that hour is my husband, and it’s something important. I leaped out of bed to get the message, only to find it was an MK pitch to make lots of money, blah, blah, blah.
I was insulted. She got me in her confidence only with the plan to make me her cash cow at the expense of my own wallet.

The red Cruze is no longer seen in front of her mother’s house, and her ordinary white sedan is not longer plastered with MK stickers. I suspect she blew a blundle of cash to get that car, and eventually lost money in the MLM game.

She also lost me as a potential friend. I see her now and I laugh to myself about the money and time she must have lost buying product, hitting up potential sellers, and attending those meetings.


    1. Shay

      And I mean from consultants to customer? We all know that aren’t any sales hardly, but why does MK get swag with it? Even Lularoe had to stop paying bonuses based on how much consultants were buying and actual sales.

      1. PeachyNotPink

        Herbalife came about because Bill Ackman was trying to make a crap ton of money by shorting Hebalife stock in 2012. FTC began investigating in 2014. Ackman was only going to make money if Herbalife stock when down. Maybe that’s a coincidence???

        Regardless, Herbalife stock has more than doubled since Ackman’s short of the stock in 2012, so he lost in a big way.

        So as slimy as MLM’s are. I also think Ackman is also a sleezeball.

        What it means to “short” a stock In case you are interested:

        Suppose you believe the stock price of ABC is grossly overvalued, and the stock’s going to crash sometime soon. You believe this so strongly that you decide to borrow 10 shares of ABC stock from your broker, and sell the shares with the hope that you can later repurchase them at a lower price, return them to the broker, and pocket the difference.

        You proceed to sell the 10 borrowed shares at $50 each, pocketing $500 in cash. In reality, you would pay a small commission, and, depending upon timing, might also have to pay dividends to the buyer of your shares, but these are omitted in the example for simplicity. So you now have $500 in cash and have an obligation, at some point in the future, to purchase and return the 10 shares of ABC stock. If the stock goes up above the $50 price, you’ll lose money because you’ll have to pay a higher price to repurchase the shares and return them to the broker’s account.

        For example, if the stock went to $250 per share, you’d have to spend $2,500 to buy back the 10 shares you owe the brokerage. You still keep the original $500, so your net loss would be $2,000. On the other hand, if the company happens to go bankrupt, the stock will be delisted and you can buy it back for a few pennies per share, most likely, and pocket almost all of the earlier sales proceeds as profit.

        1. TRACY

          There is no shame in shorting stock. There is no shame in exposing the deception and unethical acts of a company after taking a short position. In fact, we NEED short sellers to help keep companies honest.

          1. PeachyNotPink

            Maybe I’m just naive or altruistic. I applaud the wanting to expose deception and unethical acts, but Ackerman doing it just so he could make a profit off of it is slimy to me. Ackerman basically “loaded the deck” when he made his bet in 2012. It’s like that shell game on the street – only the dealer knows which cup the ball is hiding under (none).

            I’m not against shorting stock, but I really don’t like Ackerman or his methods of trying to make money in this short.

            1. Do you prefer Carl Ichan taking a long position in Herbalife stock just to spite Ackman [correct spelling]?

              At least Ackman wanted to bring down Herbalife, and stop their deceptive and unethical acts, while he profited. Carl Ichan only wanted to bring down Ackman, for solely personal reasons, while he profited off of Herbalife’s deceptive and unethical acts.

              1. PeachyNotPink

                @Pinkvictim I don’t condone any of the Herbalife stock war – I’m not picking sides. But has it really done any good with bringing down other MLM’s like MK? The battle went on for 7 years and what was the affect on other MLM’s?

                All I’m saying is that if someone wants to bring down an MLM, I truly believe there has to be a way to do it with more integrity than what Ackman pulled (I misspelled his name in my second post) The ends don’t always justify the means – and in this case the ends were not even close to what the means were trying to achieve.

                Ackman is slimy. Ichan is slimy. MLM’s are slimy. And the FTC refuses to do anything about it.

  1. Colleen B Halbert

    No means no. When I tell you no I don’t want to have sex with you it doesn’t mean keep pressuring me. Same with MLMs. I absolutely despise the phrase No just means I want more info.

  2. Peaches

    I wonder “woman to woman” if you tell someone NO and they keep on, would that be harassment? Or would you call it “MK Mental Rape”. Just sayin’ We tell our daughters, nieces and young women in our “sphere of influence” that it is OK to say “NO” and yet in MK they just keep on pushing. Or maybe that’s it… Like a Drug Pusher, MK pushes the Pink Crack thinking you just can’t get enough.

    1. Char

      Right. The MK MLMers (perpetrators) play it off like they are doing their victim a favor.

      The perps present it that way, but we here know if they succeed in the act of recruiting you, it is for their OWN short-lived ‘satisfaction’ – then on to the next.

      1. ran4fun

        “The MK MLMers (perpetrators) play it off like they are doing their victim a favor.”

        The true “beelievers” and “mklifers” have been brainwashed into believing MK opportunity IS the best for women, so they have been conditioned to offer it until others finally “see the pink light” so to speak. They believe it deep in their hearts, and when people don’t sign up, the excuse is “they just don’t ‘get it’.”

    1. MLM Radar

      Depends on the type of phone, service, and call-blocking app you use. It’s not always so easy.

      Also depends on the relationship you have or had with the now-pesky consultant. If she’s your long-time friend and part-time sitter, or you’re her sitter, you may have reasons for not blocking her.

      If she stops her number from being picked up by caller ID, you may not be able to block her. Also, she may use several numbers to call you: her cell, her land-line, Voice Over IP, her husband’s or kids’ cell phone, Google Voice…

      Blocking calls coming into land-lines can be particularly tricky.

      iPhones have the easiest call-blocking software. Block her number on an iPhone and you’ll never get another text or ring from that number.

      But Android phones will often ring once to let you know a call was blocked. That’s still annoying at 6:00 AM. Or the call blocking app may silence the ring but still display the number.

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