So... Primerica.

First of all, my Physical Aptitude Test for Delta went pretty well. It consisted of a hearing test (press a button when you hear a beep), a step test (step up, step down, step up, step down, repeat for three minutes), and a lifting test (put 75 lbs. in this box and lift it from this level to this level, while maintaining good posture). *shrugs* Piece o' cake.

After that, Ang and I met with the Primerica cult. Er, I mean, financial service. Sorry, Freudian slip, there.

Yeah, lemme see if I can accurately describe Primerica to those not in the know. Ang found out about this company from one of the customers at Denny's (it wasn't even her customer, actually). The woman said she thought Ang was a very positive and outgoing person and she felt those would be excellent qualities for the kind of work she was in, so she gave Ang her card and invited her to go to a meeting about the job that Tuesday evening. She even invited me along, the more the merrier. So, we figured, eh, if Ang could pick up a second job relatively part-time, why not? We're hardly hurting for cash right now, but we could always use the money.

So, not really knowing anything about the job other than the fact that it involved "financial services," we headed on down to Mesa, a good 20 minute drive from here, to see what all Primerica was about. We were greeted very kindly by the woman who first invited Ang in the first place, and she led us into the office complex where Primerica was meeting. A greeter at the door welcomed us inside and invited us to sign in, since it was our first time there. From there, a another man who presumably worked there ushered us in to the main area in the office space, which was set up like your average small church, about six rows of four chairs on either side of a middle aisle, with an overhead projector shining toward a white screen at the front.

Eyebrows raised yet? Greeters? Ushers? Guestbook? Overhead projector? Sure sounds like a church to me.

And the resemblance hardly ended there. The entire meeting was basically a little pep rally for the job itself, with multiple speakers talking about what the job consisted of (without actually explaining what the job consisted of), and all of them talking up how wonderful the company was, how much better a model it was than other similar companies, and how much money you could conceivably make doing this job. There were actually posters on the walls advertising "the $100,000 club," which celebrated "your first $100,000" with a sort of Superbowl Ring decked out in diamonds and stuff.

One of the speakers in particular, a guy from Hawaii who apparently had flown in special for this meeting, acted as a pseudo-pastor for the evening, encouraging the audience to be winners, "not losers," as he specifically put it. It was incredible. He'd pose a question, such as, "Boy, times are tough, huh? Anyone out there think times are tough right now?" And to this, the audience would respond with empassioned "Yeah's" and "Mmhmm's" and "Oh yes's," bearing not just a passing resemblance to your average Full Gospel Baptist Church. I've never been able to stomach the blind agreement with a pastor of any kind, regardless of how much truth (or Truth) he's preaching, I'm going to actually think about what he's saying before agreeing with it automatically, so I sure wasn't going to be feeding fire into this guy's kindling.

And yet... as the night drew on, I found myself wanting to participate. I found myself actually wanting to speak up when the moment seemed appropriate, go along with the service, give in to the business revival being preached. It was unsettling.

Anyway, we left the meeting feeling odd, but hesitantly optimistic about the prospect of the job. Ang moreso than me, but it was more a nagging uncertainty than an actual pessimism at that point.

That night, I had a dream that basically directly pointed to Primerica being an unstable investment. Nagging uncertainty turned pretty quickly into boldfaced skepticism.

The following day was the day of the test for Delta and our second meeting with Primerca. After I got home from the Delta test, we quickly ate some lunch and then drove out to where they'd told us to go. And we drove... and drove... and drove a little more. Come to find out this place was all the way out on the border of Queen Creek, almost a good hour away from us here. Did not realize that one when they were telling us where to go.

But find it we did, and once we got there, we quickly got into discussing the real, honest work that the job would entail. And to be entirely fair, it does seem for all intents and purposes to be very honest work. Primerica is kind of an amalgamation of any kind of financial service you can think of. They're part bank, part insurance company, part investment firm... and all love. Well, at least they seem to be. Their biggest selling point is their Financial Needs Analysis, or FNA, which basically maps out all of your current finances, be it income, debts, or expenditures, and gives you a bit of a tool to use to help you get out of debt. This isn't the loan part; all they really do is show you what you're doing with your money right now and steering you toward a possible better plan for how to manage your money, be it making bigger payments on specific loans or investing more in life insurance, or a 401k. That's the biggest thing.

It's even free of charge. You don't have to pay them a dime if you don't want to. Pretty good, honest work, right?

Well, far as I can tell, yes... it's the actual job that's the shady part.

Remember, this is a company built like a Full Gospel Baptist Church. In addition to that mentality, it's also something of a multi-level management scheme, or pyramid scheme. The actual way we'd make money doing this is, essentially by recruiting other people to do the job. You can make money by never accomplishing this, but it won't ever amount to much. This I think is how Primerica has been allowed to exist for the past 30-some years, because while it's clearly a pyramid scheme (which is actually illegal in this country), it isn't merely dependent upon the recruitment part. For every loan or insurance policy or investment you do get someone to take through Primerica, you get a cut (be it $100 bucks or $50 or whatever). So that part is merely like your average commission-based sales job.

So... it's like the shady part of the job is shady on whether or not it's actually shady. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

However, whenever you do recruit someone into Primerica and are able to yourself personally train them in the job, you'll automatically be given a cut of whatever that person makes. You don't take money away from them, however; as a more senior member of the company, you're now due more cash per every transaction, and whenever your recruit makes a sale, you basically make the difference of what you would make if you'd done it yourself and what they actually do make. Like... if you're now owed $400, and they make a sale for $100, you'd make $300, just because they're your personal recruit.

What I don't get is... where's all this money coming from? Supposedly you're owed, like, $100 bucks for every life insurance policy you get signed. However, life insurance only costs, like, $40 bucks a month on the high end for most people. Where'd the extra $60 come from, and why are you making so much as the lowest level employee?

So, um. Yeah. After some careful thought and discussing it with some outside opinions, we decided not to give Primerica the go-ahead. We think it was probably in our best interest.

On the bright side, on the drive over to Queen Creek, we found a real live Anthropologie store that Angela just had to go in. She's been in love with this retailer ever since she learned it existed online, but we'd never found an actual store apart from the online store. I'm thinking it's probably because everything in Anthropologie costs about $150 bucks a piece, and we don't usually find ourselves in neighborhoods where such places would be abundant. Ang actually ended up finding a pair of pants in her size that was marked down from $158 to $19.95. Insanity. She's awaiting her mother to hem the legs (they were clearly designed with a supermodel's stilt-legs in mind), at which point I'm sure she'll be wearing them incessantly. Perhaps we'll get a picture of them up sometime.

Okay, this ended up being really, really long, as I figured it would be, and I've just wasted an hour. Commence vegging!

Song stuck in my head: True Affection - The Blow