Complaint Review: Community Marketing Solutions - Charlotte North Carolina

Glad to see at least ONE other person woke up from this nightmare.

For me, this whole messy business began in mid-July of 2008. At the time, I was newly engaged and in search of a job outside of helping out at my parents' restaurant on the weekends (which they had just bought and still own today). Here is my story. I got a call from a similar establishment the day before. The place was located on Mallard Creek Church Drive, which was only a fifteen-minute drive from where I lived. I came in and interviewed with a lady who asked me the standard "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" Then she asked me if I would prefer an administrative position or a sales position. I answered honestly that I would prefer an administrative job, as I had previous experience as a receptionist. The interviewer told me to have a good day.

I walked out of that building thinking I totally blew it. I wasn't upset for too long, though, because that same afternoon, I got a call from (yep, you guessed it) Community Marketing Solutions. The woman on the phone set up my interview with Erica Miller for the next morning. The day of my interview, I walked into the lobby and was given a clipboard with a form clipped to it, to be filled out before my interview. I saw about five or six other people filling out forms. I filled out mine, brought it up to the front desk and was called in almost immediately. This interview consisted of the same questions asked in the previous interview, so when that question rolled around this time, I changed my answer and told Erica I would prefer sales. She seemed happy with my answer, and that afternoon, I got a call back from CMS to set up a second interview. I was told it would be an all-day thing, so I pictured taking notes, filling out workbooks and watching training videos... kind of like traffic school or something. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I would actually be following around a "leader," really just another word for lead salesperson. Actually, the odd thing was that the employees at CMS treated "sale" as if it were a dirty word, even though that was what the job consisted of. They weren't supposed to say they were selling, but merely "adjusting clients' prices." But I'll get back to that in a minute.

My second interview consisted of playing follow the leader, basically following this girl around as she went door-to-door in this residential area in south Charlotte. Between houses, she would explain the format for talking to clients. She only asked me one or two questions about myself the entire time we were out there. We came back to the office and I met with Shaun Hogan, president of CMS. He offered me a position in seconds, saying I had been talked up by the girl I had followed all day, and that she would be my superior. I hadn't said or done anything particularly remarkable up to that point, but like a flaming dipshit, I happily accepted my new position, no questions asked. I needed a job that badly.

The next day, my first official day of employment, I attended the first of many daily meetings before going out into the field. Much of it consisted of chanting and clapping. I felt like I was in a locker room full of football players getting pumped for a big game. If an employee made their quota for the first time, he or she was made to put on a hard hat and do an exotic dance to house music in front of the entire company. (I was out of town on a business trip when I made my quota for the first time, so I didn't have to partake in such a humiliating display. However, since a bunch of us met our quota that day, one of the leaders decided to take us to a celebratory dinner at the ever-so-classy Hooters.) If an employee made quota two days in a row, he or she would be promoted to leader. Sometimes, we were given "inspired" speeches, like, "A piece of carbon can turn into a worthless lump of coal or a brilliant, sparkling diamond." But MOSTLY, these "meetings" consisted of games I could have played in elementary school or my eighth grade drama class, which leaders swore were relevant to our jobs, but really weren't. It all seemed like just an excuse to goof off before driving out into the field... which ended up being fine with me, as it didn't take long for me to absolutely despise my job and the company. Wednesday nights were the highlight of each week – that was when everybody would go out for drinks and socialize. I feel that even if some of us didn't make quota, we ALL still earned those Wednesday nights.

My position as a "solutions provider" (cough, SALESPERSON) consisted of going door-to-door and talking potential clients into switching over to AT&T and Dish Network or, if they already had AT&T and Dish Network, I would offer to have their bills readjusted to a cheaper price. In other words, we were selling "cheaper" phone plans (the quotation marks exist for a reason). We were expected to sell five or six bundles by day's end every day, only we weren't supposed to use the word "sale," or any of its derivatives. We were instead supposed to tell people that we were going around the neighborhood, adjusting their prices so their bills would be cut directly in half, and maybe a fraction more. During my employment with CMS, I made quota only once, never made leadership and was paid in peanuts.

I was employed for nearly a month and a half.

Here is what I had to endure in that time span:

1. I was expected to go door-to-door in rain, heat, thunderstorms, sleet, snow, whatever, and I was expected to look polished at all times... that meant styling my hair and make-up in a professional manner, blouses, Oxford shirts, dresses, dress pants, skirts and nice shoes. This proved to be especially difficult in brutal weather. Leaders would yank my umbrella from my hand, saying I looked ridiculous when I was trying to prevent rain from falling on me or trying to avoid getting a farmer's tan or sunburn (only on the days I did not wear sunscreen). Once, I got caught in a downpour midway through one shift. I was soaked to the bone and wound up having to don a Green Bay Packers jersey, which a co-worker graciously let me borrow so I'd have something dry to wear. Yes, people, I went door-to-door in a PACKERS JERSEY, not to mention wet hair and messy, streaked make-up. (I'm glad my job ended before fall rolled around.)

2. During my first and only business trip with CMS, I had the cops called on me and two other associates as I was making the rounds in a Greenville, SC neighborhood, just trying to make a sale. I remember sleeping at a Comfort Inn that week, sharing a hotel room with three other girls and splitting the cost of gas with everyone.

3. I've had doors slammed in my face, I've had people insult me and I've been chased off a client's property with a weed whacker (not even kidding!), literally five seconds after I greeted him. I also had a property manager at an apartment complex somewhere outside of Charlotte angrily tell me to leave and not come back. She had embarrassed me in front of residents and then watched as my co-workers and I gathered everything in the car and drove away.

4. A potential client who was married harassed me as I made my way to the next house, saying I looked "good enough to eat." I got similar harassment from my own male co-workers, who often commented on my "sexy eyes." I told them I was engaged (I was the only non-single female employee; in fact the male to female ratio of non-single salespeople, I noticed, was three to one... and there were about thirty people in the company, not including those who worked for only a day or two), and they actually made fun of me simply because I rejected their advances.

5. I remember sometimes being paired up with a leader nearly old enough to be my father and having to use my own car to transport us to Rock Hill and Salisbury, because he himself did not have a car. (I should note that the drive to the office from my own house was forty-five minutes long, and I was already spending money I didn't have on gas.) He also gave me a bit of an attitude each time, and once demanded to be let out of the car when we had only made it halfway back to the office from Salisbury.

6. I was threatened by my superior in a voicemail, in an attempt she made to try and urge me to work on Saturdays, even though Shaun permitted me time off on the weekends, given my situation (I had to help out at my parents' restaurant on weekends; that was the busiest time for the restaurant, which was understaffed at the time).

7. Sometimes I was not permitted a lunch break, and if I had to go to the bathroom while I was out in the field, FORGET IT. None of us were allowed to enter a client's home for safety reasons, and we were not allowed to drive off anyplace with a public restroom (like McDonald's or Lowe's) until our shifts were over. In other words, we were expected to hold it in for five to seven hours. On two separate occasions, I would spot a church in the neighborhood and walk in to use their restroom when none of my co-workers were around. When you gotta go, you gotta go!

8. Finally, I once – and only once – had a client call me directly on my cell phone, upset that we had adjusted his price, all right – there were extra charges on his bill and his monthly payment was now much higher than ever. I couldn't blame him for being mad. I apologized profusely and put him on the phone with my superior, who lied her way through the phone call. She hung up the phone and told me to lie through my teeth, as she had done, the next time a customer called to complain about his or her phone bill being jacked up. (She had also told me about another leader lying to clients about not having start-up fees added to their bills and that if he could tell such lies, so could she.) I was shocked. I didn't realize what I was helping CMS do. I also recall a co-worker of mine leaving the company because he had bought a phone plan from CMS and the same thing had happened to him. At least, that's what I'd heard from other co-workers (we never heard from him again after that).

After five weeks of this, Shaun randomly decided to terminate my employment. He gave me the excuse that a client had called to complain about me a couple of weeks before. The story went that after I had completed my sale, I refused to leave the client's property, which never happened. Why wouldn't I want to leave? Why wouldn't I want to continue making my rounds and trying to make more sales? Why would I risk someone calling the authorities on me? Shaun said he had no choice but to reverse the client's payment and reimburse him, resulting in a loss for the company on my part. I didn't believe him even for a second. I had already found out that lying your way around having to pay back a client was prominently encouraged at CMS. And if Shaun was willing to pay back this client, why couldn't the guy who called my cell phone be paid back? What about the co-worker who had quit? I was pretty insulted when Shaun fed me this lie, and told him so. Shaun then told me my numbers were the lowest as far as sales went, and that numbers don't lie. I could believe that (after all, I couldn't even convince my own mother to switch over from Time Warner Cable), and would rather he had told me that than feeding me some bullshit about a client saying I wouldn't leave his front porch.

Anyway, I didn't really care about getting fired... by that point, I hated working in sales and was finally free to be on my way. I didn't even feel shame from being fired rather than having quit sooner, even though I wish I had quit sooner. I just felt relieved that I didn't have to repeat the fruitless sales process the next day, or any days after that. I was done. So I remained very civil as I said my good-byes to Shaun and Erica (who happened to be in the office when I was let go, for some reason), got my paycheck and hightailed it the hell out of there as fast as I could.

The next day, I didn't get a call from any of my now-former co-workers. The same people who'd welcomed me into the CMS "family," praised my "potential" and my "skills" as a salesperson, invited me to their houses for dinner, played pool with me and my husband at Gillian's, introduced me to their significant others and with whom I'd participated in one fun, drunken karaoke night at Buffalo Wild Wings, were now avoiding me like the plague and pretending as though I'd never walked into that office. I tried to contact one person who had borrowed a music CD from me, but he seemed to vanish after I asked him to return it to me. The only person who even bothered to contact me after my termination only did so for the purpose of reminding me why I had "failed," citing "survival of the fittest" as the main reason... at which point, my husband then came to my rescue and told her that when a person uses low, weak tactics like lying, cheating and stealing to get what he or she wants, the theory of "survival of the fittest" does not apply to that person, and that it was cruel of my co-workers to leave me under the impression that they liked me, only to cold-shoulder me once I was out of the company. My former co-worker had nothing to say after that. To be honest, though, once I had snapped back to reality and realized what kind of sketchy conditions I had been working under all along, and that the familial vibe at CMS was bullshit, I wasn't worried about not belonging in my former work family anymore.

So what did I get for all of my trouble, all of my wasted gas, all of the extra minutes I spent calling AT&T from my cell phone and all of my time walking around, often in horrible weather? Four paychecks totaling up to less than two hundred dollars for five weeks of ALL of the bull crap listed above. Less than two hundred dollars was my payment for five forty-plus-hour weeks, and I did spend a fair amount of overtime. I didn't even receive a W-2 form. With everything I'd been through, I could have AT LEAST been compensated for the money I spent on gas and the calls I made to AT&T.

Hindsight is 20/20. I made stupid choices and big mistakes, yet in doing so, I emerged from the whole situation with several lessons learned. I am now back in college, studying hard and earning my success the RIGHT way. I have decided to go ahead and pursue a career in music education – that has been my dream all along. I am just a year away from getting a degree, and I'm very excited about it. In retrospect, I should have realized from the get-go what I was getting myself into when I was first hired by CMS. I know I should have quit early on. I also understand that when Shaun had let me go, he was actually doing me a favor. I did not want to work in sales anymore, and I certainly never wanted to work in an environment that was cutthroat and less than honest. Sorry, Shaun, if you're reading this, but that's what it was. Not only did your clients get ripped off, your employees did, too... including employees who put money back into CMS by purchasing your stupid phone plans. And when people patronize the company they work for only to get ripped off, that's pretty bad. CMS was not the rewarding, fun career it was made out to be... just the opposite. I was ashamed to tell people what I did for a living (which is barely what it was), and even my own family was skeptical about what kind of a job I had. You have lied, and you've brainwashed people into thinking such manipulative behavior is acceptable when it isn't.

Anyway, when I returned to the office to pick up my very last paycheck, I saw Shaun once more. He was walking around the office, more smug than ever, apparently having just come back from a business trip to London. I didn't see anyone else. On my way out, I ran into a woman getting ready to go in and interview. We made small talk, and I wished her luck on her interview. She asked if I worked at CMS, and I told her I used to. She asked if I liked it and, not wanting to seem pessimistic, I smiled and said, "It was okay, but I wasn't really cut out for door-to-door sales. Perhaps you'll have better luck than I did." The smile on her face disappeared in an instant and she said, "I was never told I'd have to go door-to-door!" I told her that everybody who got hired would have to do door-to-door sales every day. She thanked me and did what I should have done in the beginning: she walked away without doing the interview.