Polish Student Recalls Summer Nightmare
I just found your site today and boy am I happy to see it up on the Internet, I also like you I was in the southwestern company, Right from the begging I knew something was fishy. But I always taken risk in my life. My story is similar to yours but different in a different way, My summer was in 2007, I was recruited from Scotland, U.K, that's a long way from Nashville. But I was excited to be honest. I couldn't wait to get going. I was thrilled to know y group would be heading to California, I have never being to the United State, and here was my golden opportunity to go there for the first time. My dream come true!!!
When sales school started, thetas when all my expenses went up!!! I came prepared, had a bit of money in my account, and also the exchange rate from dollars to pounds was really good to my advantage. When I got there i noticed that all the student that was where all came from Poland and a few Scottish people as well, but majority of them where polish student. let face it the polish Economy isn't all that great, There student manager told them they could make an average of $8,000 and even more if they worked really hard.
I knew there was a catch to all these simply because “nothing it that easy.” I am a mature student, and most of the other students where young and weak minded, easily controllable. After the sales training school, a lot of the polish students where broke or coming close to zero $$$. I felt angry because it was clearly stated to them in the first place. Most of them borrowed money from friends and relatives to buy their ticket money from Poland to USA and the little money they had on them was for any expenses.
From Nashville we flow the California, we all had to pay for our flight, we had nowhere to live so we all had to live in a hotel, while we were there. Most of the polish students where panicking simply because they had ran out of money, no place to sleep and had little or no confidence in the student manager. So that day our task was simple: go out and find a Headquarters. Obviously we had our little sales talk prepared. So we all went out to find a place, lucky for me I found 2 lovely, suitable accommodations. Till this day I do not know how to repay my host family I stayed with. They were so understanding and nice to me throughout my stay in California. Words cannot being to explain.
Now after we call came back from out vigorous search, our moral was extremely low. More than half of the polish student quit the program before they started it and headed out to various parts of the United States. It was like a wild fire spreading. I was extremely shocked to notice that Southwestern didn't care. Half of [the girls that left the program] where girls, only God knows what happened to them. After they left it was business as usual for the company. I kept on wondering how those students where doing because it was their first time in a new county and their English was “OK” but not great.
I moved in with my host family (I will always keep them in my prayers) along with another polish student. Three days into the summer on the bookfield, my roommates decided to quit. I decided to still give it a try and I continued, I ran in to serious problems with my student manager when he decided to remove me from a nice and lovely environment (host family)simply because my roommates quit the program. He wanted me to move in with him, and I told him it didn't make sense because my sales territory was much larger: a total of 5 local schools, and really lovely people all around. My host family didn’t mind me paying rent, as long as I bought my own food and stuff, so I wasn’t going to leave a nice comfortable family and head to the danger zone.
So my student manger decided to motivate me by taking me out on the road, he picked the 4th of July, of all days! I decided to go out with him--what a mistake. He was driving a dodge truck and we went to some of the well-off areas in California to sell door-to-door. He wasn’t walking door to door he was driving in style (he was British, and it didn’t help us on Independence Day). It was terrible. We had 2 people telling us to get off their property.
Then my student manger told me I was heading back to his place to sleep for the night my first thought was “what kind of Gay-$&!% is this?” I told him I didn't have clothes and he was like, “You can use mine.” I told him to take me home ASAP, I am not a kid, all this brain washing isn't affecting me one bit. I honestly wanted to give the whole program a good try. He finally decided to drive me home after I opened the door on the highway: he saw I was serious. I told him to stop all his talk and just drive me home and he did. And that was the END of my Southwestern program.
Until this summer I received a letter saying I was owning $180, I emailed them back saying I never cashed any check given to me by my student manager on the 24th of July and I returned it back to him. But for some reason they kept sending me the same automated emails, until finally after 3 months someone read my replies and addressed the whole issue. Can you image they sent a letter to my mum as she was 1 of my guarantor, saying if she didn't pay $108, it would affect her credit rating?!
Selling door-to-door was extremely difficult; boy-oh-boy was it difficult. I came back to Scotland with a Tan! I recently ran in to a girl that sold for SW in Glasgow. We were in the same sales school, and shared our experience. She told me quite the same story, she did finish the program and they offered her a role of a student manager. The next time I saw her she was pissed because the company told her she owned them roughly $400-700 because a customer she sold to returned the book and wanted a refund!!!! She slaved for the company almost all summer and they asked her to pay such an amount!!!!
So my vacation began in California after I decided I could no longer work for a company that took no interest in the welfare off its workers. And boy did I get to see California due to the lovely family I stayed with. That summer has a mixture of good and bad for me. But the best decision I made was leaving the Southwestern company.
I am Half Russian, Half Nigerian, but I live in Scotland. Whenever I told people that I was like a tiny celebrity!! Being in America for the first time was so cool, I never expected people would be so warm and nice. I can’t wait to go back again for vacation.
Many thanks for putting up this site; when I came back to Scotland after the summer, I thought of doing the same but as a student, I have a hard. I will be willing to pay for your hosting of your this site. I can remember in California when we all arrived to our hotel room, one of the polish students was in tears simply because he didn’t have $1.00 and his family borrowed a lot of money just to buy him a ticket to America. The student manger picked some of the weakest minded people simply to use them to sell their product.
Another polish girl had serious knee problems; she couldn’t carry the heavy bag and my student manager told her to reduce the books in her book bag. Her knee was ready to pop open and all he could say was REDUCE THE BOOKS IN YOUR BAG???!!!
Received: December 8, 2008
