I take a deep breath after ringing my neighbor’s
doorbell. The weight of my book bag pulls on my shoulders, filled with a rather
odd assortment of produce this time around: a carrot, a potato, and half an
onion. The shape of the leather bag in my hands feels abnormally unwieldy. How
many others have gone through this mental battle with themselves, wanting to
flee the scene before the process has even started, I ask myself. My trajectory
leading up to this moment feels like a whirlwind, considering this is my fourth
week on the job.
Back track to mid-December. My hours in catering are pretty much
zero, I’m working a few hours as an intern for a startup which gives me hope
for the future, but it’s certainly not going to allow me to put anything in
savings. I’m recalling the last conversation with my parents, tears streaming
down my face as I try to explain why taking out a loan to cover my living
expenses is in the best interest of my mental health. The monetary struggles in
my life are for real. And as much as money hasn’t been the primary motivation
for the part-time work I’ve pursued up to this point in my life, having chosen
to work in hotels for Spanish practice and on farms to learn about growing
food, I knew that working three jobs during the school year to cover my living
expenses would be unsustainable. Longing for the feeling of financial
stability, I vowed that 2019 would be the year of monetary success. At least to
the point that I didn’t have a sinking feeling in my stomach every time I paid
rent.
But before I get ahead of myself, let’s return to my
neighborly adventure. I’ve just spent the past hour explaining my life goals
and dreams of graduating debt-free, all the while demonstrating the impeccable
cutting abilities of a handful of kitchen knives. The demo comes to a close and
I feel uncomfortable. My neighbors, nice enough with their kids as a
distraction and ice-breaker, appeared unimpressed, giving a standoffish vibe.
They offered me one referral and I don’t know what else to do. We stand
awkwardly in their entryway. I thank them for their time, ramble on about the
value of homes that have been custom built, and suggest saying hello to each
other if we find ourselves crossing paths at neighborhood social functions. The
hugs are even worse, with that weird lean-in hug so that our stomachs don’t
touch. Whatever. I tried, I think to myself. Wrapped up like an eskimo, I step
outside into the icy air and walk home, wondering if those bright eyes I had in
training were fooled by dollar signs…
 |
| Screenshot from one of my infamous Cutco videos |
Let’s be real. Being a Sales Representative for Vector Marketing
and showing Cutco is complicated business. It’s not just about selling
knives. And it’s not just about making some extra cash. In fact, it’s not even
about building relationships, which is what I was convinced would keep me in
the game for the long haul. To give you some background, Cutco is a direct
sales company that’s been around since 1949 and sells knives predominantly
through multi-level marketing. Cutco acquired Vector Marketing Company in 1985,
and is known for targeting high school and college students. Oddly enough, I’d
never heard of it before stumbling across their ad on Craigslist.
Having taken a few weeks off from performing demos, I can see with
greater clarity that the real advantage in working for Vector--known by the old
dogs as the ‘Vector Opportunity’--is the chance to spend time with people who
don’t think like me; people from completely different backgrounds, ages,
educational interests, or lack of interest in school altogether. I was the only
graduate student in Urban Planning that I know of in the Vector’s Twin Cities
offices in my cohort. I may have actually been the only graduate student,
period. Most of the others were high school or undergraduate students, many
with a background in finance or business, or not a clue what to do in the
future. One thing we all have in common was a desire to see our checking
accounts as a source of abundance rather than scarcity; to graduate from school
without the immense debt that most of our classmates carried well into their
thirties. That being said, money was not my motive for pursuing a career in
food systems.
A moment when I felt this truism come to light occurred during
training, when I instinctually cringed as one of the Reps rubbed his fingers
together after being asked about his favorite part about the job. There were
other ‘red flags’ of sorts that made me feel uncomfortable around the others:
the division manager’s emphasis of materialistic, and in my mind, upper-class
rewards, such as a Rolex, BMW, and a night on the town at a fancy steakhouse;
the phrase ‘we sell kitchen knives to moms’. All of these were
unappealing to me and represented the consumerist impulses I work to rein in on
a daily basis and gendered norms that feel out of line with where we are as a
society today. Less is more, I always tell myself. What you need versus what
you want are vastly different things, and as soon as you put these items in
their respective places, happiness will follow naturally. How do the
gender-neutral bathrooms on campus and “Mr and Mrs. Jones” from the sales
script fit into the same picture?
Recognizing that one of the biggest motivators for my colleagues
was money, and that many of them resided in the affluent suburbs surrounding
the Edina office, I soon realized that I would probably never see myself
spending time with these people under normal circumstances. This girl bought a
pineapple for every demo? Are you serious, I asked myself incredulously. Does
she have any idea how few months out of the year are they actually in season?
And how much was she paying out of pocket in order to make a sale--with no
guarantee that she even will? Who would work for a company that doesn’t pay for
travel expenses and training when they are required components of the job--the
only components, I would argue, that allow you to succeed? Surely not anyone
with a sensical bone in their body, I mused.
Yet I kept coming back.To the morning phoning sessions,
the weekly team meetings...all of it. I was in the midst of serious cognitive
dissonance. Of course at the time I didn’t recognize this for what it was. I’m
here for the money, too, I thought. What makes my desire for financial
stability any different than the person sitting next to me? And what makes this
work environment so attractive? I settled on a handful of characteristics that
make Cutco sales reps and management staff a model for the kind of positive
culture I aspire to create as a supervisor one day, should I ever be in such a
position:
- Constant encouragement
- A growth, or abundance, mindset
- Determination to succeed
- Willingness to fail and learn
from it
Knowing that I wasn’t
getting paid for the time that I came to the office was difficult to justify,
recalling conversations with my dad about labor laws that require employers to
pay for training, the number of breaks you’re legally required to have when you
work so many hours, etc. Having worked for many years as a housekeeper, I am
well aware of what it feels like to be taken advantage of. But if I’m
enjoying myself, I wondered, is it really a violation of my rights? I pushed
thoughts of the ROI of my time to the back of my mind, convinced that the
benefits of being in this space would reap greater benefits than a fat
paycheck.
Three weeks after my first day of training, I found
myself invited to YEB, Vector’s infamous Year-End Banquet. The turning point, I
would argue, in my Vector Career. If I’m going to do this for real, I
thought, I might as well go all in, right? I rationalized the time away for the
weekend with learning skills that would pay for themselves soon after my
return. Little did I know that I would come away feeling more confused about
Vector’s strategy than assured that my job with them could be the variable that
changed the way I thought about money.
Don’t get me wrong. Vector’s got some great things going
for them, and some truly inspiring sales reps. But that doesn’t change their
gendered sales script, predominantly white sales reps, consumerist incentives,
unpaid training, and somewhat questionable pay structure. The situation,
and my criticism of Vector would be different if my time wasn’t so valuable.
Having been criticized for my volunteerism throughout junior high and high
school and constantly asked the question “Why don’t you get a real job?”,
I tend to evaluate the opportunity cost of nearly every decision I
make--perhaps at the expense of living a more spontaneous life--but this begs
the question. Would I have been better off financially if I had spent all that
time in between semesters writing scholarship essays instead of learning how to
sell knives? Better yet, would ‘entrepreneur’ have made it into the list of
adjectives I use to describe myself now?
Let’s take a step back, though, and look at the other
side of the penny. That is, the person who I’ve become because of Cutco. The
audacity I possess that I didn’t before. The cover letters I can write. The
renewed confidence I have in my own abilities and the faith that my hard work,
no matter what I decide to pursue, will pay off in the end. My conversational
skills with strangers. Recognition that my self-motivation is a quality that
makes me stand apart from others. I am a different person because of this job,
largely because it forced me to take inventory of my own skills. Sometimes I wonder
if, along the way, I picked up skills that will make the opportunity cost of
not working a regular, hourly-wage job pay off in the end.
So what’s the point? How does this relate to my job as a
Social Media Strategist for Voices for Rural Resilience? Primarily it comes
down to this idea of tension. We navigate it everyday. Yet when do we take the
time to recognize its presence? Or intentionally put ourselves in
tension-filled spaces? I owe it to Vector for putting me in a place that I felt
very uncomfortable, but learned how to come back to time and time again so that
I could understand the other side of the equation--a different spectrum of
values that I constantly try to shy away from. I do this because I feel like
I would betray my own set of beliefs about money and happiness by spending time
with people who see them so differently than myself, or so I think.
Do we really see the world so differently from each other? Or is it just a wall
we create in our heads to be in ‘safe spaces’ of like-minded people?
Dig this. We separate ourselves from what we believe is good and
bad consciously and unconsciously, until we find ourselves in echo chambers
that amplify our own thoughts. Through employment, education, recreational
activities...we enjoy spending time with people who are like us because it
prevents conflict. At the same time, though, we facilitate judgement,
criticism, and the pointing of fingers in the opposite direction, when really,
we should probably be pointing the fingers at ourselves.
This is one of the best parts about my job for Voices for Rural
Resilience. Not only do I get to help people share stories about the
complexities of their own identity and encourage them to get out of their
comfort zone, but I get to test out the same strategies I suggest on myself.
It’s a constant process, removing yourself emotionally from a situation even
just for a few seconds to see how you ended up there, how you could be doing a
better job of listening, and evaluating the possibility of challenging yourself
just a little bit more the next day. These ideas sound vague, but that’s
because it looks so differently for each of us. For me, it might look like
asking my Somalian classmate to share with me how he believes he is
misperceived. Next week it may be through my decision to shop at a new grocery
store. This year...developing a meaningful relationship with someone of a
different socioeconomic background. Each day is not only a challenge but an
opportunity to be better, and through my work with VRR I am reminded of just
how lucky we are to act on that in ways that work for us and our imperfections.
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