|
The Hatch-
I'm old (relatively), and have a career in an area where I have to sniff out bullshit, scams, and evil-doers on a pretty frequent basis. When I heard the scam check story my first thought was, "how fucking stupid!" You have to be kidding me that you fell (partially) for one of the best known, most written about scams on the internet. Then I was relieved that the bank looked at the check and laughed, so you weren't permanently out any money.
As I thought about it though, and looked back honestly at my own life, there was a time when (despite my harsh judgment) I was also partially taken in by a scam. I was 19, had no family financial support and was taking a year off college - mostly to get my head straight and pick a direction. I too needed to eat and pay rent. The scam that almost suckered me involved several days of 'training' to sell an expensive product door-to-door. The first weekend, we were supposed to 'practice' our sales pitch on friends and family and if they wanted to buy - so much the better. There were even extra commission incentives for that first weekend. Off I went to do my pitch for family and family friends. All four demos I did resulted in sales. The folks I was pitching couldn't really afford it and all had to do finance contracts for three years to afford the 4 figure price tag. I dropped off the finance contracts with the 'Manager". As with any modern door to door sales, there was a 3 day right to rescind the transaction. After that, I was going to make about $1,200 in commissions. It seemed awesome......
Until I started to think through what I had really seen and experienced. I had responded to an ad for 'management trainees" though I and most of the 20 or so other people that showed up for 2 days of motivational sales pitch (aka 'training') didn't really seem like management material of any kind. The two days of training were part selling us on the 'business' and part teaching us the rather easy sales presentation. We even rehearsed.
The offices themselves seemed to have only 7 employees. One was the manager/sales pitch guy. Another manned the warehouse, handing out units to us and filling orders after the three days were up. (We were told he too had come through the program). The other five were young women crewing a phone room, fielding hundreds of phone calls from other applicants responding to the same ads (which continued to run). Not only were there no managers - there was nobody to manage.
Then I thought about what would come next. Sure - selling people that knew and liked me - and appreciated my enthusiasm an overpriced item had been easy, but cold-calling others seemed far more daunting. Slowly, I pieced it together. I had gotten as far as anyone ever would - the first weekend's sales to family and friends. Next week, I was sure there would be a new crop of 'management trainees' in the same room, going through the same process. They'd churn folks needing work through their scam until it stopped working.
I went in to the manager and told him all the people I'd sold had rescinded. He sat across his desk and looked at me pretty hard. "All of them?" I stared right back. "Yeah." It was pretty clear to both of us that I had figured it out. To his credit he didn't mess with me, just sighed and handed me back all of the finance and sales contracts. I then had to call back everyone and return the contracts. It was a hard but valuable lesson. I haven't said what kind of product on purpose, as this scam continues to this day with various fill-in-the-blank products.
So the main point of this long story is don't be too hard on yourself. Even a grade-A, squinty-eyed, hard-ass like me was once young and on the ropes enough to (almost) fall for something. Most people that fall for the check scam wire out their own money, believing that the check will clear (and they often do 'clear' and show up as money in the account - just to be determined weeks later to have been fraudulent and then just as quickly un-clear, with the person out their own $)
Ending up on some dumb list and losing access temporarily to your money, is probably a better ending than permanently losing 2k of your own money when you can least afford to. Chin up. I suspect that with a little time and effort you can get yourself off that list. I'm sending you a small donation to cheer you up. Get yourself a sammich and a drink.
Your Dickensian living situation is something else entirely........
|