Day 11
Boy, oh boy. This is a doozy.
On December 30, I was at the gym with J, and a girl approached me who looked familiar. She asked if I went to Hoover (our elementary school) and I replied, "oh my goodness, yes!"
I thought it was so sweet and kind that she approached me and we begin talking about what we were up to now regarding school, work, etc. And after the conversation ended, she asked to keep in touch. I asked if she had social media, in which she replied she had just deleted it. I went to my phone to get it open to write her number down, but she already had her phone open and ready for mine. I inputted my phone number, and we went about with our workouts.
When J and I were getting ready to leave, I decided I was going to approach her to just say a quick goodbye. She was with her fiancé, squatting, and so as I said that it was nice talking to her, he turned around to introduce himself, too. Because of his unprecedented talkativeness, J came over to then introduce himself. We all got on the topic of work, and they dropped the word "e-commerce." Well, naturally both J and my mouth dropped open because oh my, what a small world.
We ended up chatting for another few minutes and then proceeded to deliberate we should all get coffee after J and the fiancé had also exchanged numbers.
J and I left the gym so hopeful and excited because it's a rarity to meet two motivated people (a couple, too!) who also partake in online business and are around our age.
After a couple days, J received a call from the fiancé requesting to set up a time for coffee. He mentioned the fact that they had a "business proposal." This was red flag number one. J said he would chat with me about a date and time.
After us suggesting a couple days they couldn't do and them suggesting a couple days that we couldn't, the fiancé sends red flag number two over our way. He sends a message to J along the lines of, "do you guys actually value the time to sit down with us because it seems you aren't setting aside a time to do that." This threw us for a major loop because like I said, we in fact had suggested multiple times of our own that they had turned down, so this was rather confusing for us to contemplate.
J has a very avoidant, positive approach towards most things. So, naturally he gave them the benefit of the doubt and insisted that we have been difficult in certain ways so it might be somewhat warranted. Although, I can admit I am a difficult, neurodivergent person regarding my schedule and wanting to partake in events on days I don't have something else happening (work, etc.), I just couldn't take on an opinion that we had given an impression we didn't "value" getting coffee with them.
Regardless, we persevered and found a time agreeable for us all. J and he verified the time and date, although not the location. Therefore, the fiancé made the assumption again that we must not be interested enough and texted J that he had to schedule a meeting with other business associates. J replied back but the fiancé then claimed it would be okay to meet just an hour for the scheduled day... so we met them to chat!
With all this back and forth, there was already a strange feeling about them but that proved to be truer than ever. All that I knew about them at this time was that they had their own business that they ran together, but I knew none of the details. The meeting began by them asking us questions like "why did you want to meet with us today?" and "what are your future goals?"
Finally, after a while, they begin delving into their business model. It was a very vague, hard-to-understand description of what they do, which I didn't pick up on at all. But what they wanted from us, was to know if we were interested in "joining them," but in a way of us starting our own model / business from the main supplier.
J immediately began to tell them that he's a bit busy for this and already has a lot on his plate, in which they replied that that was a yellow flag for them. Eye roll
They wanted to meet again but insisted we needed to read a book before we had that meeting. They made claims that it only shows true interest if you dedicate that much time to read a book in a few days and that "most people" read the book in two to three days max. It was an enormous amount of pressure but no route to just say "no thanks."
We left the meeting honestly confused and amused. It was intense and not at all, just meeting up for coffee to chat, which is what we thought it was going to be after we spoke at the gym.
Either way, the following day I worked my typical day shift at work and began to read this book (a PDF, mind you). I got about 45 pages in before J texted me that he found the supplier they have, Amway. Yes, that's right, the king of MLM.
Well... I guess being exposed to pyramid schemes at one point or another is just a canon event but oh boy, was it a shock to us both! But it all made so much sense after. It felt like a lot of pressure, vagueness, cult-like mentality, programmed behavior ... I could keep going.
It was a crazy experience, that's for sure. But, we still have our meeting with them this upcoming Monday. Obviously, we know where we stand but now I think we're really just having some fun with it.
I'm glad we could put our heads together to figure out our little mystery. What a surprising epiphany (denouement)!