NY Has Officially Lost It's Mind Bitch

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

We do not use a pyramid structure, nor multilevel marketing -- we reckon MLM unethical and reject it.

1.) Do you, or do you not, have the ability as a sales rep to "recruit" other sales reps?
2.) Do you, or do you not, receive a commission when someone you have recruited makes a sale?

I'll give you fair warning, a simple Google search has already answered these questions many times over.


More importantly, I don't really care if it is an MLM, or if you are genuinely successful at it. If so, great. My post was really just a gentle reminder that if you choose to be a dick to other people and make personal insults, you may expect people to do the same to you.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

1) Not as a rep -- but as a manager. Reps do not have other reps working under them, nor is Vector Marketing structured that way. There is a "we'll reward you if you bring in somebody who succeeds" program, which kicks in after he succeeds at a certain level, but he's in no way under you. He, like you, is another independent contractor with Vector. You don't manage him unless and until you become his District Manager or something, and he for some reason does not become a manager. There is always the possibility that he could, as Vector is a growing company.

The emphasis, though, is on reps doing the job of moving the excellent product we sell -- we go up against fine brands of kitchen knives like Wusthof, Sabatier, and JA Henckels every day and we outsell all of them in the United States, and only Henckel outgrosses us worldwide. That is the thing we're here to do, and not to recruit a swarm of sub-reps like vampires' chyldes. The money's not in that, but in doing our jobs in people's kitchens, making their lives better than they once were.

2) Managers get their pay according to a rather detailed formula of varying percentages of the sales the reps in their offices make. This does not come out of the reps' commissions but out of the overall profit markup on the product. The formula is weighted to encourage the manager to do his main job, which is to recruit new sales reps and to train them. The manager succeeds when his reps do, and in all cases the rep receives the bulk of the commission, so it's designed to everyone's advantage from the newest new guy to the senior manager that runs the regional Pilot Office to make sure the new guy is trained in the best, most effective techniques of sales and of service, to follow up. This has the effect of the most successful manager being the one who has recruited a large officeful of sales reps, and then devotes all his effort to increasing their skill and keeping them enthused by any ethical means at his disposal. Competitions, awards, bennies, and "bucking them up whenever they are glum," which also happens -- salesmen really only sell when they are enthused.

The Branch and District manager's job is recruitment and training, and we endlessly pursue the best training -- and since what is best gradually evolves either from creativity or changing conditions, it is well to stay current. The managers get a good deal of training and dissemination of current info too. A great many Branch and District managers reduce their personal selling during the primary recruit/training season, which is the summer to give more time to their primary job.

Calling the fact that we have managers a "pyramid scheme" does violence to the definition of pyramid scheme. That we have office managers to recruit and train, and to pipeline orders to headquarters in Olean NY is not a pyramid anything, but the company's information-handling structure, if you want to be rather abstract about it. The flow of information goes both ways; orders in and commissions and recognition -- we do a lot of recognition because we are about nothing if not positive motivation -- out. Calling this structure a pyramid scheme is more the blather of persons allergic to sales and marketing than a factual description. Marketing can be learned, and one expert at it can thrive, but too it does call for a certain personality type -- generally a right-brained individual who is willing to take some risks and who can invent it as he goes along.

I like Vector because it's a no-bullshit outfit. The corporate culture figures there isn't time for it -- what there is time for is ethics. I have invariably been treated properly and according to my deserts.

That's the word from the inside.

[Undertoad]

In my experience poor writing and muddled communication are so often associated with poor thinking that that is the way to bet.

It's funny that, because when I read you, I read a person with excellent grammar skills, a top-notch vocabulary... and terrible communication abilities.

It's hard, because every one of us will read each other differently. But I always read you as trying to impress everyone with flowery prose. For me, it totally obscures whatever you were writing about at the time. More UG prose to slug through? Long sentences to decode, $1000 words where $1 words would do? What a pain in the ass, I'll bypass this post and nothing will be lost.

The shorthand I read in you is "I'm correct, because I'm very smart." Here you make that very point. And this annoys me; because the biggest lesson I have learned in my life is that my high intelligence and good education are great tools to have, but they entitle me to exactly jack shit.

No, you aren't correct merely because you're very smart. No, you aren't correct because you can write well. Don't you see all the people who are very smart and who can write well, who are making massive errors all the time?

(edit: I'm sure there are folks who read my stuff and think I'm doing the same thing. It's hard, because every one of us will read each other differently...)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It's hard, because every one of us will read each other differently. But I always read you as trying to impress everyone with flowery prose. For me, it totally obscures whatever you were writing about at the time. More UG prose to slug through? Long sentences to decode, $1000 words where $1 words would do? What a pain in the ass, I'll bypass this post and nothing will be lost.

And you'd lose out thereby. I'm complex, but I'm worth it. Long or short, I impress. Angering the troglodytic -- because of what they are -- is simply part of the deal. I also anger the philistine, both at the start and in the follow-on, the conflict there being that they wish to stay philistines, and I don't think they should. This part of the ruckus is my screed against philistinism in the language.

No, you aren't correct merely because you're very smart. No, you aren't correct because you can write well.

Of course not; I seek out the correct, and then write well about it.

Don't you see all the people who are very smart and who can write well, who are making massive errors all the time?

And I hit them on it about as often as anyone, when I understand their error.

[DanaC]

Thanks Undertoad. You make the point very eloquently.

To underline it: you can tell little, if anything, abbout a person from their competence (or lack thereof) in written English.

There was no understanding, nuanced or otherwise, to that example at all, which is why I remember it so vividly and why I'm so thoroughly appalled even today -- the error was too elementary for an adult's powers. I did not achieve my quality of written English through either exceptional genius nor magic. If anything, it was being trained by people who got it -- and could teach others to get it also.

Not everyone's experience of education is the same and not everybody's natural inclinations suit the teaching styles that have been used with them. Not everyone has the same natural aptitudes. I know, from my work that there are many adults for whom these seemingly simple concepts are in fact very difficult to grasp. One of the most intelligent people I have ever met came into my class with written skills more appropriate to a six year old.

I had this cold by elementary school. What's the others' story?

Really? I only had that in the last few years. In fact, I didn't fully understand the plural possessive apostrophe until I studied for my level 3 Adult Lit support quals. Care to reach some conclusions about me, my intelligence, my attention levels, or my school experience, from that?

I'm afraid this amounts to a plea for incompetence, which I reject at the nonce and always shall and will. Arbitrarily.

No, it amounts to [pointing out to you that you are over concerned with something others may consider trivial. When I write a degree level essay, I take the time to make sure that it is grammatically correct and contains no spelling errors. Some of that (most) comes naturally, some requires a little more thought and on occasion I have sought more information about certain types of puntuation or an unusual spelling. Here? On the forums? I don't. I am amongst friends and am having a written 'conversation'.

Like leaving off the final E of gaffe and substituting for this a hooked snagger of fish and bales, or several of them -- though we'd agree that were we to get ourselves mixed up with the pointy parts of one or more gaffs, they would be about as obvious to us as anything is likely to get. Colo(u)rful too. And difficult to bear.

Well done, you spotted a typo. This must mean you are superspecial.

I agree: it was quite the misapplication, wasn't it, to insist that you shouldn't end an English sentence a preposition with. Up with this we should not put. (Anyone who wants to imagine Churchill making Yoda sounds is free to.)

Well done. You have found an instance where latinate grammar fits our language. *applauds*. English is a hybrid language, it contains both germanic and latinate roots. Some of the rules of Latin apply, some don't.

e.g. To go boldly where no man has gone before.
To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Spoken English allows both those sentence structures. Indeed, the second sentence (which by latinate grammar would be considered incorrect) has more resonance and power and is therefore more suited to its purpose than the 'correct' sentence.

There are two types of 'grammar'. There is the 'grammar' which our language naturally has. It is born of the human brain's inherent understanding of grammar and the organic development of a living language. Then there is the 'grammar' we've been talking about in this thread. That 'grammar' is something which describes our language. It is a tool to understand language. At a time when learned men in England were attempting to nail the language down (and describe it fully), they utilised Latin grammar, as Latin grammer was a) written down and codified by the Romans and therefore was an obvious base to draw from and b) deeply fashionable. These days, linguistics students are taught grammar in a very different way.

Language can become art rather than engineering -- I'm good at the art end, and can follow the engineering.

Very good. Me too. Not everyone is (or wants to be ) an artist or an engineer. This does not make them lesser people.

[DanaC]

Before I left they were monitoring certain neighborhoods for domestic violence and they could confiscate your property then too.

And there's something that couldn't possibly be open to abuse...

[deadbeater]

As far as I'm concerned, they should have banned the 'b' word when the rap song came out saying 'B-----es ain't sh-t but h--es and tricks'. Now that too many knuckleheads are adopting the same lifestyle as that blasted song, the banning comes too little too late.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Banning words doesn't solve anything. Ideas will be passed even if they have to make up words to do it. Censorship solves nothing.

[piercehawkeye45]

I agree with Bruce. These songs are not the problem, but just exposing it.

As I said, I don't think the problem lies with the misogynist songs, but the fact that teenagers of both sexes will buy into it and think that this is a "cool" or acceptable lifestyle. It shows that our society still has many misogynist tenancies and embraces extreme gender stereotypes.

[Flint]

There should be a law against where you're in the movie theater and somebody goes "shhh" and you go "it" ...

[DanaC]

I'm complex, but I'm worth it. Long or short, I impress.

Most of all I think its your out and out modesty that impresses me UG.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

My humility is greater than your humility!

Shall we continue the satire for another six or seven posts, or have we really done enough?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's not the heat, it's the humility, that's so oppressive.

[DanaC]

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Oh boy... this isn't going to be easy...