Sketch..

How many of you were basically forced to fill out a survey in the beginning of whatever lecture hall class with questions like
"Are you competitive?"
"Are your goals in life oriented around success?"
"Do you want to make lots of money this summer?"
And then of course you have to write down your name and email and sooner or later some guys is calling you about some internship over the summer and you find yourself sitting at a table at the hub with other a couple other kids hearing about this AWESOME internship?

Okay, so maybe you haven't experienced all that, maybe you've only filled out the questionaire. In my case though, I went up to just about there. I didn't go any further.

Here's when you know it's sketch. They just throw some big numbers out at you like "this one guy made 15,000 dollars in one summer!" Or they just tell you what you'll get out of it at the end, "You're going to come out of our program with self discipline and tools for success!" In fact, they fill you up with all these numbers, principles and motivational messages about their program that you forget that you still don't know what the program is.

It took me a survey, a phone call, and half a meeting until I found out what I'd be doing. Pedaling from door to door.

They did such a good job selling this to me that I didn't even walk away because I thought it was sketchy, or that I didn't think it was a legitimate program. I walked away because motivational speakers with "how to be a winner" messages reminded me too much of the Dad from Little Miss Sunshine. I kinda came from the type of family that despite having a strong competitive streak still had the "in our house, everyone is a winner!" philosophy.

I called my Dad and told him what I had experienced. He looked it up on Wikipedia right away.
"Em, this is so sketchy. They make you buy all the materials wholesale and you're paid based on commission. They make it seem like you have little to no living expenses but that's far from the truth. So many universities have banned them from recruiting at their schools."

I had been duped. And the poor kid next to me who was all game for the "internship" had been too. I've been looking out for him on campus this week just so I can warn him! ROBBIE IF YOU'RE OUT THERE, GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!

So how did they do this? Imagine if they had told me that I was going door to door to sell some educational materials before they had told me about all the principles the program is built on and the money I'd (maybe) be making. Imagine if they had called it pedaling instead of "professionally selling educational materials to families in their homes." Imagine if they gave me statistics for everyone in the internship program instead of the five or six success stories. I'd be out within the first 5 minutes. All the strategic word choice, formatting and even the person they chose was all orchestrated to suck me into an unethical program,

The point is-->here is the rhetoric we all thought was "bad" at the beginning of the year. This is the kind of trickery we fear, and why we accuse politicians of using rhetoric as if it's a bad thing. This is where rhetoric gets that sneaky connotation.

Go ahead and wiki Southwestern Company.