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All rights reserved. Used with permission. Sales Job Ends by Side of Road Date: 07/01/2002 Edition: Daily Section: Local/Region Page: A1 Word Count: 1306 word Photo Caption: Brett Welch sits outside a motel in White River Junction after he'd been kicked off his sales team last week. Photo Credit: Valley News - David M. Barreda Sales Job Ends by Side of Road By Jodie Tillman Valley News Staff Writer Within two weeks, he stood alone on the side of the road in Norwich, wanting to go nowhere but back to Sherman. Why Welch, who caught a bus home on Thursday, was kicked out of the van full of magazine salespeople last Wednesday remains unclear. He said the "team leader," who was driving, stopped the van and told him to get out, following an argument over how few subscriptions Welch was selling. But James Molinero, a company manager, said the team leader told Welch to get out of the van because the 18-year-old was telling customers they had two weeks to cancel their subscriptions, when they actually have only three days. Molinero said he had planned to fire Welch before the incident. Welch, however, said that he never misrepresented subscription information to customers. In any case, Welch's experience provides a glimpse into the world of door-to-door magazine sales, an industry that sends teams of teenagers and twenty-somethings across the country every year. The companies attract young workers by offering a chance to make good money and travel, but the problem, say critics, is that few of these young people can stick with the job long enough to reap the financial and travel awards. "Kids are the largest naive labor pool there is," said Earlene Williams of Parent Watch, a New York City-based nonprofit group serving as a watchdog over youth labor in the door-to-door sales industry. Parent Watch estimates that 200 sales groups employ between 15,000 and 30,000 mostly young adults in the United States. Welch had been working for almost two weeks canvassing homes in Vermont and New Hampshire on a magazine sales team called the "Liberators," which contracts with Pacific Coast Clearing Services, Inc., an operation based in Gig Harbor, Wash., that acts as the head office for dozens of teams, each with its own manager, across the country, according to a receptionist with P.C.C.S. The teams send their subscription sales to P.C.C.S., which in turn sends them to the magazine publishers. Welch said he was hired after a single telephone interview less than two weeks ago. A woman asked him a few questions about past sales experience, and then asked him for a detailed physical description of himself before giving him an identification number he would need the next day for a bus ticket out of Texas, he said. "They told me to be at the bus stop at 2:25 the next day," he said in an interview at the Shady Lawn Motel, where the team was staying for two nights last week. "I wanted to find something to get away from Sherman for a summer." Welch's mother, Tera Groner of Sherman, said in a telephone interview last night that the woman said her son would make $300 each week in the first two weeks of training and 40 percent commission on subscription sales in subsequent weeks. Molinero, in a telephone interview, declined to comment on how workers are paid, saying only that several "sales teams" across the country compete with each other for the highest number of subscription sales, that the two teams with the most points in a six-month period get free trips to anywhere in the world and that everyone who stays with the team for six months wins a $5,000 bonus. In general, such teams consist of mostly 18- to 24-year-old men and women who are usually paid a set percentage of the "front" costs, in addition to a daily food allowance of less than $20, said Williams of Parent Watch. Magazine subscription sales, she said, are divided about 50-50 into "front costs," which go to the contractors, and "back costs," which go to the clearinghouses. "If he doesn't sell," she said, "he doesn't get anything." Problems arise when the teens, many of whom have never traveled alone on their own, are unable to make many subscription sales, she said. "There are very few kids who stay long enough to get enough points," said Williams. Problems also include kids being stranded in strange places, living in crummy motel rooms and traveling with unsafe drivers, she said. In fact, there have been cases in which team leaders crashed their vans, injuring and, in some cases, killing the young workers, she said. The "Liberators" were tackling New England before heading to the Midwest, said Welch, who was still in the company's two-week training period. He met the rest of his team in Burlington, Vt., about a week and a half ago, and they canvassed neighborhoods there and in Essex Junction before arriving last Tuesday in the Upper Valley for a brief stint. Every day began around 8 a.m. with a team meeting that served as both a pep rally and a chance to discuss the best techniques for winning over customers, he said. The group had a weekly goal of 55 sales, and newcomers had a daily goal of five sales, he said. Welch said he c ould not meet that goal, and, in fact, had days when he sold none. Last Wednesday, the group had been trying to sell to homes near Dartmouth College, he said. Welch, who had no reason to know about the murders of two Dartmouth College professors last year, said that several residents told him he was in the wrong town to be knocking on doors. After he was kicked out of the van on Route 5, he said, he walked to the Car Store in Norwich, where an employee gave him a ride to the Shady Lawn Motel. When the team returned that evening, the team leader, who told him to get out of the van, gave him $10 and a ride to the bus station, Welch said. The bus station was closing down for the night, but Welch met a man outside the station who had an extra bed in his room at the Ramada Inn, he said in a telephone interview from his home last night. He caught a bus to Texas the next day. Molinero said that he paid for Welch's bus ride home, but reached last night, Groner, Welch's mother, said that she and her husband paid for the $160 ticket. "I've got the receipt right here!" she said. Groner, who works for a phone company in Texas, said she was skeptical when her son told her about the job. Welch had been only as far as Arkansas to visit his father once, he said. But, "he was all excited and thought he was doing good," she said. She said the company gave her several first names of people and a toll-free number to contact in case of an emergency. "They never would give me a last name," she said. The Internet has several Web sites devoted to the personal experiences of young people who worked on the magazine circuit. While some kids say they appreciated the chance to travel, others say they never had any money and were verbally abused by their team leaders. When her son called her and told her he had been told to leave the team, Groner said, "Oh, Lord. I was panicking. My kid's in the middle of the street in Vermont, and I don't know nothing about that town." She said she has not heard from any company representatives and was relieved when her son finally got home this past weekend. "He said, 'Mama, I ain't never leaving the state of Texas again,' "she said. "He came home hungry as a hog, and now he's just sleeping." Valley News - Vermont Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. |
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