The Vector Marketing Scam

Or, This Ain't No Strawman

When I got a letter from "Vector", offering a job with benefits, $17 per hour/appointment (more on that later) and an environment geared towards students, I was certainly interested. What I didn't know then is that Vector Marketing, according to who you ask, is either a great source of student work for hardworking entrepreneurs, or else a manipulative scame. Which is true? Let's start with my Vector experience.

The letter directed me to a website, workforstudents.com, that I remembered seeing plastered around my campus down in Richmond, Virginia. On the site I filled out a very basic application. The sheet said that I was to call to set up an appointment; to my surprise they called me the next day. I set up an appointment (we needed to allot over 90 minutes to the interview, which surprised me, but what the heck, no other job leads had been promising.) With plenty of time to spare, I arrived at the Falls Church headquarters on Columbia Pike and headed to the proper room.

The setting was a tad unexpected; I was in a cramped and rather cluttered lobby with folding chairs around the perimeter and trophies in a corner--of course, the obligatory motivational poster ("Teamwork") decorated the far wall. A number of other students, less well-dressed than me, were seated filling out a basic questionaire, along with some older folks who I figured were hurting from the economy and were willing to give the job (which I still had little concrete ideas about what it was) a chance. We were treated to some poor music coming from a boombox in the corner while we waited and the place filled up with applicants (some people in jeans; I mean, seriously, no one will take you seriously dressed like that, so why bother wasting 90 minutes?) Three of us were shepherded into an adjacent room at a time for "pre-screenings", basically elaborating on the content of the paperwork we filled out. The district manager who talked to us acted something like a robot, mechanically calling out names and remembering them almost immediately. I still can't be sure he wasn't at least part machine, or just trying out for the new Terminator movie.