I basically got hired for what I thought was going to be a really great paid acting job, but I was tricked and taken advantage of and they got 2 weeks of free labor out of me. It’s a little tricky to explain over the internet, but I’ll try.
US JESCO international sells products by having people do live in-store infomercials. They posted an audition notice on a Seattle theatre website where I get all my auditions and local theatre information. They said they were looking for actors in the area to train and sell products. They said the starting rate would be 350 dollars and you could go up to making about 650 bucks a week. So this all sounded pretty amazing to me! I went in and auditioned and got a callback for the next day where they talked about the job more and interviewed me. Everything sounded really great. They told me a number of things I would get—flexible schedule and that I could basically design my own schedule, travel, a bad day with them would be 100 bucks a day, short shifts. It all seemed pretty perfect. I would get to act, be a sales person and make money all at the same time!
I started training and they gave me a script to memorize (a long one, but no problem after doing NTI!). I was training to demonstrate a mandolin for vegetables and fruits, which they called the “Kitchen Envy”. My trainer was really nice, but she started having me do things that I wasn’t told I was going to have to do in my interview and when they were telling me about the job. For example, I was working more hours than they said I would be. They also said that I was just the “talent” and wouldn’t have to set up before my shows. They lied, I was having to come in, prepare all of the food (that would be sitting out, stinky, basically on the verge of rotting), buy some of my own produce (that they would later reimburse me for and never did), and I was getting no breaks. Also my trainer started telling me to lie to people about the product I was selling. She would admit to me that the stuff I was selling was cheap, but I had to make it look like it was gold. It was annoying and weird, but I brushed it off telling myself I should push through.
Right when my training was ending, my boss called me and asked me to travel about 5 hours away from where I live to a military base to do a pitch for 5 days. However, I would have to pay for my own gas and they would book a hotel for me and take it out of my paycheck. I thought it was bizarre, but I said I’d think about it. Immediately, he just assumed that I would do it, and basically scheduled me to go out to this military base by myself and do pitches from 7 in the morning to 10 at night. I tried to talk to him about it and told him I wasn’t ready to go out and do such a big pitch after my first two weeks, but he was so mean to me about it. He kept trying to convince me that I would make more money out there. He danced around all of my questions with sneers, intimidating “answers”, trying to manipulate me to do it. He was basically trying to bully me into traveling to this weird place to sell stuff after my first two weeks of working. After a few days of this, I had enough and I quit. I wasn’t being treated well and I told them to never contact me again.
They also had me sign a contract at the beginning, which I should have never done without having someone else look at it. It was later explained to me that I was basically signing something that said that I was an independent contractor, not an employee and that they had the right to work me as hard as they wanted to, and pay me when they wanted to, and that they also had the right to fire me with no notice. However I signed something that said I would have to give 2 weeks notice before quitting, and if I didn’t I would have to pay a 500 dollar fee if I didn’t show up to work. A lawyer friend of mine said it was barely enforceable. So when I quit, I never paid a fee because they lied about it just to scare employees. But they basically tried to play me with a silly contract and verbal intimidation.
They say it is not a pyramid scheme, but it is. I did some research after I quit, and this company preys on hungry actors that want to work and get paid and they work them for all their worth. They trick actors by calling the interviews auditions and callbacks. The management is horrible and uses intimidation and bullying to get actors who are selling products in the stores to work and do what they say. People do eventually get paid, but it’s barely minimum wage on a good day and they get sucked into this weird system. There is a big slimeball factor.
