5th Dimension Promotionz or 5th Dimension Productions scamming my friend into free labor.
Today, my homie Frank (Zel if you play world of warcraft) hit me up that he got a job. Frank has been working hard in school and trying to pay bills. His parents were encouraging him to get a job so he does what he does best, go out and look for jobs.
He ends up posting his resume on Career Builders, to find a potential employer to fund his college expenses. Later on Frank gets a message from 5th Dimension Productionz about a job interview for their company in San Jose. He responds and sets up the first interview. Frank shows up Thursday, July 5th 2007 at 4pm. After speaking with Lindsey the owner for less than 10-15 minutes, she mentioned he should come back for a second interview.
The second interview consisted of going to Big Lots off of Story Road with a trainer named Rosemary. Rosemary seemed very motivated, intelligent, and professional. Before going to Big Lots, he had to sign a paper stating he was an observer. While there he was instructed to watch and understand how the entry level position works.
Frank noticed that they had setup a simple fingerprinting ink pad (like the ones used at police stations), with some piece of paper, to help get kids fingerprinted. The theme seemed to be about helping missng children. They also had various products like T-Shirts, Wrist Bands, Child Protection ID kits, that were sold at the table. He was also given a 5 steps on how to sell their products (Introduction, short story, assume purchase, etc, etc). Being at the table, he would hear Rosemary saying the pitch many times. After doing that, he was instructed to greet people coming out of Big Lots. If the person was interested, he would direct them to the table, where Rosemary would close the sale. The products being sold seemed to be at outragous prices. Wristband for $5, T-Shirt for $10, Calligraphy Kit for $10, Electronic ID for $30 which was the big sale. Frank had noticed that a lot of the older people tend to have time to listen to them, and after hearing the story, they were compelled to help. In order to “save the children” they had to purchase the products which donated a certain percentage to the CPEA. What was the percentage? Upon Frank trying to recall what they said, it was around 20% that actually went to the organization. The other 80%, who knows?
Finishing the day up, Frank had to fill out a survey, then go back for his last interview with the other Lindsey. He was then hired on the spot and asked to show up on Tuesday, July 10th.
Later that night, I meet up with Frank, and he says he got a new job. After explaining what they do and the company he works for, it seemed kinda sketch. I start to google around and we turn up with another blog who had a similar experience. Ho John Lee ended up meeting someone from 5th Dimension Productionz while walking out of a store, and after asking some basic questions, he walked away and didn’t donate. You could read his story via this link. While reading thru his site, the comments section included a person by the blog name of Molly B posted a comment on his site about her experience with the interview process and experiences. Here is an excerpt of what Molly mentioned:
They are doing something to promote the charity, but still selling something to earn a commission for themselves. The most aggravating thing to me isn’t that they are using legitimate charities to make money for themselves, it is that so many of the other candidates they sucker in spending a full day “interviewing” end up being free labor.
While looking further down in the comments, there were other people who had interviewed with them and had that gut feeling that something was up. Peter posted the percentage of what is actually given back:
20% goes back to the charity, 35% goes to the seller, and 45% goes to Lindsey (Lindsey needs to pay for fees pertaining to her business, maybe, I don’t know if her silent partner might pay for fees etc.) When I learned that only 20% was given back to charity, I knew that this job at this company was not for me. I mean come on! These are non profits that need 100 percent of proceeds! Its very disgusting how this company works. Also, this ‘business’ has not motivation or team meetings or any kind of meetings to boost up their performance. How do I know? The person I shadowed told me so.
After looking at the people who responded, it definetly seemed that they were not making money in the right way. It seemed as if their business was standing behind the front of helping people, and using people’s willingness to help to turn into a profit for themselves. What does that do for our communities? What does it do to the people working for that company? The underlying thing here is, if they are using peoples good will of donating and helping out to force the purchase of products, then don’t initially reveal that only 20% of the purchase is going towards the charity like CPEA, how efficient and helpful is that to the community?
I get really passionate about issues and scams like these, that profit off of peoples willingness to help each other out. Definatly don’t support company’s like this. There are resources out there to clairify whether a Charity is out there for the greater good, or if they are there to make a buck off of you. Here is a popular link:
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
If you also ever have an interview for a Multi Level Marketing company, research them on google and find out what they area really about. In finishing up with what Peter said in his post:
All in all, it seemed like working for this company would only give bad karma by lying to consumers and suck them out of their money and give less to the charity that needs more. As I learned, many of the workers there are not college graduates…if they were college graduates they would have known all operations of BUSINESS ETHICS!
Now, Frank has to go back on Tuesday, July 10th. What should he do? Frank is really mad that he got talked into free labor and scamming people for their money. Should he show up to work and inform his co workers of whats really going on? Should he call them up and say Fuck You I quit? What do you think? Have you had a similar experience? I am going to contact CBS 5 and their 30 minutes Bay Area section and have them do a full blown investigation on these type of marketing companies and especially the ones that fall in the guise of helping people. This is not right at all!