That's not surprising really. People whose company we enjoy or who we started to get know well invariably, a) got married and found a new focus, b) moved to a different state and in one case country, c) had children which curtailed their freedom or d) had family or work life that overtook them.
For our part, once hosts to several parties a year, we just got out of the habit of entertaining. Oh sure, we had some clunkers in the party stakes, but we also had some great dinner parties too. For some reason the effort became greater than the reward.
The invitation to dinner came in a phone call from a couple we did not know at all really. My wife first met Monique (not her real name) at a conference and could hardly wait to tell me about this spirited woman of French extraction she had found so simpatico.
We agreed to meet Monique and her husband Lenny (nor his) in an Indian restaurant, chosen by them for our benefit because we are vegetarian. We are easy going and so were they. Conversation flowed. What do you do? I guess I was feeling dumb, because his answer, "We've started a franchise – but it's hush hush," did not raise any flags. Sure there were questions like – "where do you see yourself in five years?" and talk about residual income and financial security. We explored each other's background, discussed films, health, food and touched ever so gently on politics, which was unavoidable given the proximity to state and national elections.
We split the bill and parted as if old friends, with a promise to share a film, to stay in touch and to meet up again soon.
The following Tuesday night, past the hour that our respective families would consider appropriate to call, my wife recognized Monique's number on the caller ID and answered the phone. After a few minutes, I heard her normally exuberant tone ratchet down a notch or two.
"No Saturday was not a good day for us," I heard her say.
It was true; I would be out of town at a mystery writer's conference.
"No Tuesday would not work either," she said, although I wasn't quite as sure why not. Then I heard her say, "What exactly is the opportunity?" followed almost immediately by, "But what is the product?"
That's when I knew we had been multilevel marketed to. My wife was on the phone for another 15 minutes, too polite to be impolite as she certainly would have been to a cold caller with a proposition. She finally closed the conversation by agreeing to talk to me about attending an "opportunity meeting" and promising to call back the next day by noon to give Monique our decision. For Monique's part, she said that regardless of our decision we would still be "friends" and go out again together.
Based on my previous experience of multi-level marketing 10 years ago and, according to my wife, with uncanny accuracy, I played back the conversation I surmised she had just had. Seems the pitch script has changed little in that time.
As agreed, my wife phoned Monique the next day and told her that it was the wrong time for us and not the sort of business that her MBA from Babson, one of the country's foremost entrepreneurial business schools, was targeted at. Again, it took several minutes to disengage.
"Multi-level marketing and friendship" is an oxymoron. Friends don't use each other. Studies show that 97% of all people involved in this multi billion-dollar business do not cover their costs or even make enough to live on, let alone enough to retire on.
The only friends that I want are those that are on the level, from day one. Anything else is just dishonest.
