I haven’t been blogging lately because of the recent changes in my lifestyle (from bum to semi-freelance). From the looks of things, though, I might have to setup a regular blog update schedule, say once or twice a week, in order to improve my gravitas (?) as a freelance software engineer.
Anyway, to kick things off, let’s start with something that happened to me a couple of weeks back.
I received a call one Saturday morning from a guy who was offering me a job. Or something like that. It was around 9 in the morning that day and it was still an hour before I should wake up. All I recall is that the guy mentioned something about being in a “multinational company” and I was referred by a friend to a job with “high income” and “flexible hours”. Being groggy as I was, I immediately responded with what first came into mind: that I was not interested in the income and all I cared about is whether the project was interesting and whether the work hours are flexible enough.
I believe the guy hesitated for a moment after hearing such an unusual answer (people want money, not time), but regardless, the guy scheduled me for a 6:30 PM meeting the following Thursday at their office in Makati. The after-work hour meeting time was supposedly due to him being busy and that was the only time that he could meet with me.
Looking back, the whole thing was really fishy had I thought about it. But I didn’t; my past few freelancing gigs were of the same “referred by friend/acquaintance + meet with the guy to talk the job over” setup and they all went well. Besides, compared to those gigs, the friend that referred me this time around was a lot higher in the “people I trust” list.
Fast forward to the following Thursday. The first thing that came into my mind when I entered the guy’s office was:
Aw crap, I got suckered into an MLM seminar.
Continue reading “Nu Skin / Pharmanex and Multi-level Marketing”