Holy crap, these people came at me with knives!!!!

To sell that is.

It's true. If its one thing I have always liked, and for once thought I might consider getting involved with, its cutlery. My grandfather was an ornamental steel worker who made his living selling wrought iron gates, hinges, tools and whatever people needed, as a result, my father got into metal working and ended up working for a renascense fair in Massachusetts making swords, knives and all kinds of awesome crap I got to play with as a kid....hell yeah. Having spent enough time around it, I can tell you what good quality blades are, and most definitely what they are not. I don't care, I love them all, hunting knives, fishing knives, kitchen cutlery, it doesn't matter, so when I discovered a small office being rented right next to my doctor's office claiming to sell cutlery, I went right in.

That was mistake # 1, but we'll get back to that.

This office had a stack of flattened cardboard boxes almost from the back wall to the middle of the floor, 2 computers, two desks and lAN cords and phone wires all over the place. I didn't really think much of it at first but the more I thought about it the more I realized they weren't even trying to look presentable. If you were a new company starting up, would you open shop when you have barely even set up a working office? One of the PCs had an open bottle of water sitting on it, and I was told I could put my coffee on there if I wanted and have a seat. I told the kid who couldn't be more than 19 years old that I was cool and I sat with my coffee in hand.

Sitting was mistake #2, but I had no idea I'd be sitting there for an hour or else I wouldn't have bothered. I didn't waste any time when he brought out a few sample knives and I jumped right in to investigate. The steel was mediocre, the blades varied but the kid made it a point to stress that they were all made in the USA, and I swear as he said it I saw Pakistan etched into the lower section of a paring knife. So I said, "wait, what about this one, it says its made in Crapistan" and he laughed and said no, its only a limited number of knives that are made outside the US, and only the blades.........yeah ok, the blade pretty much is the knife but whatever. There were also some kitchen tools, spoons, and a ladel that said they were made in China. I mean I don't get it, all quality issues aside, what's the point of bragging that you don't make your product outside the US, if only a portion of it is made IN the US?

When I stepped into this territory, I started to realize the kid was losing ground a bit, and I seriously didn't feel like arguing or lecturing even if I wanted to waste time like I do arguing here sometimes lol..I think he started to see that I was losing interest and then broke out the big guns with something that any man on earth would take a moment to look at, and that was Cutco's version of the legendary KABAR knife. Kabars are legendary for being one of the most durable combat/utility knives in the world, so yeah, I admit, I played with it. He told me it was made in America, and upon further investigation I later learned the sheath is produced in Mexico lol (who cares at this point)...

He then started explaining to me that there was now an MLM opportunity, and that it was due to the combined efforts of Vector joining forces with Cutco........Vector is Cutco's marketing firm, and for me, the death of any hope Cutco had. They basically go on campus raids and hunt down college kids to stuff in little offices and snatch up busy coffee drinkers to listen to them try to sell what they are told.

Get all that?

So imagine you're a college kid and you come across a brochure that offers $15 to $16 an hour to be a sales representative for Cutquality cutlery, and they promise that you can be own your boss, make your own and every thing. Naturally, being the lazy loafer that you are, like me, you call and send your resume because you're paranoid you might lose out to some other loafer who called first. In the end though, you get the winning phone call saying how great your resume was and that the job is yours! Now you're an independent contractor, you've learned the rules and how to sell but you just need to buy that first set in order to do your demonstrations at a cost of $150. Then you're required to pay for training sessions which are mandatory and why not? since you bought the knives already, now you need to be committed fully.

Congratulations, you can now make about $6 a day, good luck paying off those college loans.

I'm ashamed to admit that I wasted an hour of my time listening to this kid, but it was a touchy subject afterall. Not the greatest environment to drink my coffee in, but an interesting opportunity to share my little run in with this forum.