Thanks to Ex Ambot Mike
for stopping by with his WWDB Family Reunion story!
I live in Olympia a couple hours drive from Portland where family reunion was held. My girlfriend and I are going great, college degrees, power couple on the rise. I won’t go into all the boring details about how it happened but I got involved in Amway and draggd my girlfriend in with me. She didn’t like Amway but wanted to be supportive and most of the time she was tolerated it. I thought Amway would be the answer to paying off my student debt but all it did was bring me more debt. After I figured out it’s a scam run by the world’s best damn liars I quit.
I was excited about family reunion. No! Make that fired up! Caught up in the energy of everyone else in my group. Family reunion was all everyone talked about but looking back no one really seemed to know what would happen and the people who had gone before were no help. Just wait and see how great it is. Tickets included one night in a hotel and dinner at the family reunion. We had to go because we were told it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we didn’t want to miss it because we’d get a jumpstart on our Amway business and put us ahead by 6 months over people not going. We drove down to Portland Friday after work and booked that night at the hotel too. By the time the weekend was over we’d spent around $1000 in tickets, hotel, gas, meals. We could have flown down to Vegas on that money and had more fun!
We went to the Friday night trade show and it was lousy. Waste of time! There were a few Amway products and a few people behind the tables talking about them and a bunch of IBOs hanging around loving the products and sucking up to the people behind the tables. Everyone is bragging about PV and BV and I’m ashamed to admit I got into one of those conversations and said I was at 9% when I wasn’t.
Saturday morning we arrived at family reunion and there were hundreds of people lining up at the door. We get in and a lot of people rush for seats close to the stage. We were caught up in the rush but we ended up sitting about halfway up close to the exit doors by the hallway. There were a bunch of tables set up on the floor for eagles. The chairs didn’t look too comfortable. At least we got padded chairs up in the stands.
The conference began and I remember being excited at what the speakers were saying, but if you asked me now what they said I couldn’t tell you! There were Diamonds talking about the struggles they went through to get where they are and they were bragging about how rich they are thanks to Amway. They said things like: look at me. I was in your shoes once. If I can do it you can too. I felt motivated.
About an hour in my girlfriend announces she’s going to Starbucks. We passed one coming to the arena so it wasn’t too far away. It takes her an hour. I’m cranky because she left me alone for a long time and is missing all the good stuff I’m hearing. She said Starbucks was full of suits. IBOs were over there instead of being in the arena listening to this good stuff.
By lunchtime she’s hungry again. More than that she tells me she’s heard enough and wants to go back to the hotel. I start fighting with her and telling her she’ll be missing this once in a lifetime opportunity but she leaves anyway. I am pissed! Some of my upline notice she’s gone and I’m scolded. At the time I figured I deserved it for not having more control over her but now I wonder why I sat there and took that abuse.
IBOs come on stage to talk surrounded by a group of people rushing the stage and pounding on it and whooping and screaming until the security guards show up and tell them to back off the stage. I even go down there once when someone in crossline is up on the stage and can’t hear a thing because everyone around me is making too much noise.
My girlfriend comes back to join me for dinner. I think it was chicken. All the Diamonds are sitting on a stage at the front of the room. I go back to listen to the night session and she goes back to the hotel.
She refuses to go the next day to the Amway church service so I don’t go and she won’t go back to the arena for the afternoon speakers and we got into a fight again. I’ve mostly erased the stuff that went on like the bad memory Amway is. At the time I remember being excited, make that FIRED UP!
What a waste of time and money.
Notice how all the crap that we have been discussing for years at this blog is exemplified in the story that this man tells. Let's list some of it:
ReplyDelete1) The mindless enthusiasm of being "fired up" for an Amway function
2) The outrageous cost of attending a function
3) The almost irresistible impulse to lie about one's business "success"
4) The same-old-same-old of fat-assed diamonds telling you their Horatio Alger story of rags to riches
5) Maniacs rushing to get seats, or running up to the stage like teenage girls at a rock concert
6) The arrogance of up-line in "scolding" you if your girlfriend leaves the proceedings (who do those fucks think they are?)
7) The insistence that you attend a "church service"
8) The fostering of disputes and disagreements between couples if they don't agree totally about Scamway
Sound familiar? It's no longer "anecdotal," as some Amway defenders like to pretend. This man's story is a biopsy slide of WHAT IS WRONG with the entire Amway mentality.
Anonymous - just about everytime someone stops by with their Amway horror story I think to myself I could have been there in the room. This is exactly how I remember it. Those keener Ambots are lining up at least an hour before the doors open so they can get the good seats. I saw any seat that is nowhere near an Amway brainwashing convention would be a good seat. I was bored to death at Amway functions because one cult leader after another comes out with slightly changed stories, all rags to riches stories. And then they brag about how rich they are and show slide shows of their possessions. I'd pretty much fall asleep and that would outrage the fucking assholes in our Amway upline. Like how could anyone sleep through an Amway cult meeting. Easy. Because all the speakers are as boring as shit. But when I was hungry I left the building to scout out food and I was always nice enough to bring Ambot back something too. I should have taken Mike's girlfriend's advice and gone back to the hotel for the rest of the day.
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