Do Your Research Before Southwestern!
I "contracted" for the southwestern company over the 2008 summer selling in North Carolina with the University of Arizona organization and it was the worst summer of my life. As I write this testimony I realize that I have lost a summer in the best years of my life and will never get it back. I was only 18 years old when I "served" my sentence of horrific book selling. I actually got on the road the last day of my senior year in high school. I didn't even go to my graduation for high school because my sales manager needed me out in the bookfield ASAP and insisted I make the trip with some of the others. There are so many bad things I have to say about this past summer but I’m afraid it would take me days to write it all. I just wish I would have listened to a friend when he told me of his buddy's experience selling for Southwestern. I guess the point I want to get across is that if you are contemplating whether or not to sell for this company, dig deeper and read all of the testimonies and talk to other students that have sold for a summer. By the way, I didn't meet one first year that made $8,000 dollars over the summer, in fact I walked away with a check for a little over $200 and I had to pay for a hotel and gas to drive me back to Arizona which was at $4 a gallon at the time. When I received my check my sales manager asked me to come back for another summer. He put all the blame on himself for my pathetic $200 check. He made me feel great about myself and sent me off with $100 extra. A couple months later he left me a message on my answering machine telling me that I owed that money back to him. I could only laugh as I sat listening to this outrageous message. I sat thinking about all the money I had spent that I was never told I would need to spend. I sat thinking about how I would break the news to my mom about her car's engine exploding thanks to the 10,000 miles I put on over the summer, not to mention almost all the other salesmen in my organization that had HUGE car issues. In fact one of my good buddies ended up selling his Chevrolet Camaro to a tire shop for $200 after they did a diagnosis on it and found that the car was completely a write off. The engine was fried and that wasn't the only car that took a poop. Everyone on the bookfield had constant car problems and costly repairs that ate up any profit they could have made. I'm finished ranting for now, but that is not all I have to say. Many more bad things happened over the summer, and every time I think of that job I curse it. Do your research if you are thinking of joining for this "life changing" experience.
