Complaint Review: NCSA Sports - Chicago Illinois

Recently, a gentleman by the name of Keith Babb contacted me regarding possible employment opportunities within his organization--the National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA). Actually, I was not formally contacted, but, rather, sent an overly general, informal email about how I'd been selected (out of the blue) for one of their "prestigious" scouting positions. In the email, I was asked if I would be interested in attending a group meeting/interview to learn more about the position and, feeling the need for some free entertainment, I accepted.

Having briefly researched the company and the biography page for their current employees--Keith Babb, included--I had a pretty keen sense of what type of people these were. Keith Babb looks kinda like those borderline elderly people that you would see on a late-night infomercial selling juicing machines. His (self-written) biography on the NCSA Sports website contains about 50% background about himself while the other half is devoted solely to his daughter. "WHAT?", I thought to myself, "why would anyone care about this guy's daughter?" The reason for this was made painfully obvious when we were about 10 minutes into the interview when, suddenly, this blonde, bombshell, who was obviously too young to be this guys daughter burst into the room and asked her daddy a simple, trivial question about their fax machine. "Are they serious?", I thought, again, but before this thought had the time to run through my mind, she pranced across the room, thoroughly interrupting the interview, to exit through a different door in the room, giving us all a generous look at her rear end (sex sells).

Now let's get to the good stuff. Keith Babb had prepared some sort of sad excuse for a PowerPoint that started, eloquently enough, with "WELCOME TO NCSA". This page was abruptly followed by one of the more confusing looking charts I've ever seen which "explained" the average earning potential for this position: it was the usual 80K in your first year B.S.. Then we're informed that there is NO BASE SALARY, nor was there any type of decent hourly wage that even migrant workers from Mexico are entitled to.

To escape the obvious illegality of this situation, we were informed that NCSA was hiring us as "independent contractors" and that our 16% commission would be our only reliance for survival in what every one and their mother knows as the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. As "independent contractors" we were not obligated to report to the office every day, and instead could opt to work from home. This sounded kind of nice for a millisecond, until Keith Babb told us that in either case--whether we worked from home or the office--we were 100% responsible for paying our own phone/internet bills. Keith Babb justified this by saying that Vonage offers some $25/month fee for unlimited long distance calling. Well, Keith Babb, if it's only $25/month, don't you agree that that would be the least your company could do to support your employees, oh, I'm sorry, "independent contractors"?

Best of luck to anyone who dares to test the waters with this utterly ridiculous excuse for a job and congratulations to those that walked out or read this email before they gave Keith Babb the time of day.

Truthfully yours,

Tim

Manhattan, New York

U.S.A.