Complaint Review: DS MAX

To anyone considering employement at any DS-Max subsidiary, or for those already involved, I implore you to reconsider. But before I tell you why, consider the assertion that DS-Max is a real opprtunity to make loads of money. This is absolutely true. But it so only in the sense that wrestling is "real" (what you see in the ring is what the people are actually doing-the don't use computer imaging to decieve the fans).

There are definitely people who have done exactly what they are telling you you can do. Also, on a positive note, I should say that I got along well with almost everyone I worked with in the three months I was there. Now to the lies.

The first lie I was told, while on my "day of 'O" no less, was that as an assistant manager you get a base salary. This is, of course not true (One hilarious side note--two months into the biz, when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and was preparing to quit, I brought this point up with my leader. She told me that a portion of her crew's money was put into a trust that matured and the money was her's once she opened up an office. She told me how this was actually better. The funny part is that she actually believed that. What a joke).

The next lie I was told was that team days are for me to put cash in my pocket. In fact team days are an opportunity to be trained by barely literate members of the advertising division on their campaign du jour. The only reason I took the job was so that I could sell baseball ticket packages. The fisrt time I went out,I did quite well, put cash in my pocket, etc. The next time I drove an hour to a different office, arriving at 9:30 on a Saturday morning.

After over 2 hours of hooting and hollering, I was finally handed my merchandise. I was given 5 ticket packages (worth $50) and 20 Hutch's Car Wash certificates. Next I had to endure another hour of campaign training from a near illiterate, who of course had no firsthand (or second-hand) knowledge of the product, but the pitch was that I was "with the greatest car was place in the World".

I din't get to the field until 1:30 (after I dropped off two other true believers in their territory). Every person I talked to had a bad experience at this place-I still sold a few as well as all of my baseball packages. Let's remember that in this business the "client" is the not the customer. Nobody who succeds at DS-Max gives a s**t about the customer. Few have enough intelligence or integrity for that to even be an issue. God forbid they hand me 25 pieces of merchandise and let me make $250.

For me, I realized in the first week that I did not want to become a manager in this business. After identifying the company as a cult on day one of "fantastic, terrific,grrrrrrreat" I became marveled at how people lived together. And herein lies the problem: While some people on this report have claimed that "those problems were true of that particular office", it's not an office to office situation, but instead a company wide cultural policy of having no consideration for the kinds of personal situations involvement in this business puts its employees in.

Perhaps the best example of this was when a group came to our office on their managers retrain. They brought with them a poor soul all the way across the country, and his first day was in the new office. They told him that it would only be for three months and that then they would be heading back. In fact, they had no idea where the manager's ultimate destination was-she was on a reatrain.

He ultimately was unsuccessful and moved back on his own, but the fact that the company would encourage him to make the move, given the collosal turnover, is reprehensible. They placed the profit derived from his sale of one widget (and believe me thats about all he sold) above his personal comfort and mental health. They don't care about him or me or you. If they did I would have been handed 25 ticket packages.

Another great tag line "If you are not getting with (so and so) your crazy". How comical that another manager on a retrain is held up on a pedastol as someone who whose brain you would want to pick. Which brings me to another point: the "SUCCESS" of managers. In my brief experience in the biz, I had direct contact with 8 managers in the "advertising" and "communications" divisions, 3 were making money, the rest were on, or would eventually go on a "retrain".

What is so rediculous about that is not that these people go even further into debt, as managers (a good thing that there is a trust and not a base salary, right?), but that the manager who is housing a retrain manager, doesn't have the courtesy or respect for their leaders to tell them that "'Sally'is on a retrain because she didn't have a grasp on this aspect of our business".

Instead its "you should be getting with this person whenever possible" so that they can "promote your situation". Are you kidding. Great, Sally, tell me how I can lose money and go further into debt and then convince someone I don't know that he should leave his girlfriend and come with me 2500 miles for the management training position.

Another lie from the day of O', the company gives you money to help open up your office. Not true. In fact my manager relied on a loan from his parents to open his office.


Once the car wash icident took place, I knew that was it for me. But, taking out a day of O was a curiosity for me. After being switched to a joke casmpaign, one day in the field it hit me. I was done. I had cut back on cold-calling and spent most of my time looking for another job. I had made maybe $300 on this new campaign in 2 weeks, and I was at the reception desk, talking to the admin (who, incidentally, have a legit opportunity from what I gather, although despite being the backbone of the organization, get exploited to no end like everyone else), my leader introduced me to her day of O as "the top rep on the campaign". What a joke. It may even have been true. So I quit.

In quiting, my manager, who I actually had a great deal of respect for which gradually dissipated over time, gave me the "$250k net worth, not bad for a 26 year old" song and dance, trying to hit my hot spots and get me to stay. I was not willing to do what he did. It wasn't the hours I objected to. It was telling people that barely spoke English that they could be managers, only so they could sell in hard to reach areas.

It was getting people to start who they knew would not last, and preaching the opportunity to them. F-that. As anyone a few years out of school knows, gaps in employment become increasingly difficult to explain. This doesn't matter to a successful manager at DS-Max. Just sell the product and don't neg anyone out. Juice by You. So is it my manager's fault he misleads people or the company's fault that he must mislead people in order to succeed?

That is why I didn't want to take out a day of O, how could I preach an opportunity I didn't believe in for me. Meanwhile everday the successful managers mislead people about an opportunity they don't believe in for the prospective. If you have to sell crack at a scool in order to be successful, maybe you shouldn't sell crack at all. Best of luck to you all-

Regards,
Posineg

p.s. When I go on a trip at my new job, they pay for my room. Also, I use build-break-build all the time.

NY, New York
U.S.A.

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