It was during a spring not long ago. I had just turned
21 and was working as a waitress in a hotel restaurant. The job
was okay, but I dreamt of leaving my home town in the middle of
Sweden to see the world.
Late one evening a group of well-dressed young people
came into the restaurant to eat dinner. A few of them were from
Denmark, but most were Swedes around my age. They drank beer and
joked a lot among themselves. They told me they were having a great
time on the traveling sales crew of a chemical company.
"We work really hard but we can make thousands
of kronor a week," said one. I could see they really did work
hard because they all finished breakfast before 8:00 and did not
show up for dinner until 9:00 in the evening.
One of the managers was a handsome American man with
curly dark hair named James. He was in his early thirties and all
the employees treated him respectfully. One evening when ordering
dessert he started chatting with me in English. He came from California
but had been an international sales manager with the company for
seven years. He was what you imagined a successful American businessman
to be: friendly and easy to talk to but at the same time very serious.
Although I've always had guys interested in me, I
never thought a guy like James would be interested in an ordinary
small town girl like me. So I was happy when he invited me to join
him and the rest of sales crew for dinner on Saturday night.
We went to the best restaurant in town and I sat
at James's table. Afterwards we all went to discotheque together.
Some of the girls in company were pretty, they joked and flirted
with James, but he made me feel special. When I said I had to go,
James said he'd take me home in a taxi but we ended up going back
to his hotel.
James was different from the guys my own age, he
was confident, masculine and experienced. He had been a Marine and
now was a wealthy businessman. He got what he wanted and now he
wanted me. He admitted that he had had a few love affairs with the
girls on the sales crew while on the road, but said that had always
led to complications. I wanted to believe him when he said it was
different with me.
The company's sales crews had to leave for Norway
in a week and James with them. I was in love and did not want it
to end.
As we ate breakfast in his room one Sunday morning,
he said that I was sweet and beautiful, but that if I wanted to
achieve something in life I had to have the will power to believe
in myself and escape the "lagom" life of a small town.
James said we might be together if I got a job with the company.
He thought I had the stuff to make a great career as a businesswoman.
"My company is successful because it teaches people to think
positively, you'll learn a lot," he said.
He called the head office and made an appointment
for me with the director of personnel, then bought me a ticket and
booked a hotel in Stockholm, where the company was located. "Go
and see for yourself," he said.
I told my parents that I had met an American guy
and his company was offering me a job. They didn't like James being
more than ten years older than me, but said it wouldn't hurt to
go for a job interview.
In Stockholm the office was big and bright, really
professional. The director of personnel showed me the product line,
different kinds of soap for cleaning everything. She said that the
company paid for the hotel on the road, but there was no fixed salary,
income was based strictly on commission. Everyone who worked hard
learned how to sell and made a lot of money, she promised. It did
not sound great, but I wanted to be with James.
When I got home James called and said that he missed
me and hoped I was coming to Norway. I gave notice at the hotel,
packed my best clothes, picked up a prepaid ticket at the station
and took the train to Oslo.
James said that I couldn't stay in the same hotel
room with him until I had three sales a week. It was a unwritten
company rules to prevent new sales personnel who were not selling
anything from pairing up and having a honeymoon at the expense of
the company. So I shared a room with Sara, a girl who had been with
company for a long time.
They woke us up at 6:30 the next morning, all the
sales personnel had breakfast together before a sales meeting to
set targets. I was assigned to a minibus with another manager and
four other employees. We did not have any appointments but just
walked in the doors of companies and started demonstrating how good
the cleaning soap was. I was embarrassed when people asked us to
leave, but Sara never stopped smiling and had answers to all their
objections.
"Just make them like you and they'll buy,"
she said. On the fifth door Sara made a sale, a thousand Norwegian
kronor for five liters. Sara was one of the star sales women and
said she needed 7 more sales that month to win a trip to London.
The next morning I began going from door to door
by myself but nobody wanted to buy. There was no break for lunch.
Just more doors and more "no thank you's". I must have
walked 30 kilometers that day. My feet ached when the mini-van met
us. The Swedish guy in charge of our car that day, glared at the
people who had not sold anything, but did not say much to me.
James bought me dinner and said it had been a good
day for the company. He told me not to think negatively but to learn
from the experience how to get the customers to do what I wanted.
We had sales meeting for the new employees and those who had not
met their targets. I stood up and introduced myself in English.
Everyone applauded. It was just after 1:00 when we finished.
I spent the night in James's room. He was the reason
I was in Oslo and the humiliation of the day did not matter anymore.
I awoke from a deep sleep when the alarm went off at 6:15 to hurry
back to my own room before the company wake up call.
Each day passed the same way. Time became a blur.
To my surprise some customers bought from me. Show that the product
worked, smile, chat and joke and 20 minutes later some of them would
sign orders for thousands. Then in the mini-van there were smiles
and congratulations. Even before we got in, the managers and drivers
knew by the way we walked whether or not we had sold.
But we did not always sell, and then it was hell.
Some of the managers used to hit the dashboard, pound the roof and
swear. "Never take it personally," they used to say. But
you did. Some of the girls were crying in the car, but they didn't
care. I never dared ask James about it. But he must have known since
people quit or were fired all the time. There were always newcomers
to take their places.
Everything was so expensive in Norway. The company
paid for the rooms but every meal in the hotel ate up all the commissions
I earned. You had to go out with the gang on Saturday night and
drink, so some of us were always short of money. James always had
thousands of kronor in his pocket paid for many of my meals but
I told him to stop because I was afraid the others who did not have
money would be "sour."
When the summer came James said that he wanted me
to go abroad with him on holiday, but thought we had better wait
till I had more sales. He thought I would have a good chance if
I went with one of the mini-vans up to Northern Norway where at
lot of money floating around and customers were "guppies",
the company's word for people who would buy if you flattered their
egos.
I did not want to leave James, but I went and walked
up and down the hills for a month. The fjords and nature were beautiful,
but that just made everything stranger since we never had time to
stop and enjoy it. I lost kilos and I was not overweight to begin
with.
Once, when I came to the car one day without a sale,
one of the bosses, a Swedish woman, asked me 'Why didn't you sell?'
"I don't know," I said.
"If you say you 'don't know' one more time,"
she replied, "I 'm going to slap you."
I felt sick and weak inside.
When we joined the others back in the south, I told
James that I was not certain the job was for me.
"Come on, you can't give so easily. I'm always
here if you need help," he said, looking into my eyes. I promised
to stay.
The next day a girl who had been with the big group
while I'd been up North, said, "you ought to know James been
sleeping with Eva, while you were away."
I did not want to believe it. Eva was an attractive
blond girl from Stockholm who started at about the same time as
I did. From the way she looked at him during dinner I thought it
might be true. Had James been with us both at the same time?
All the time in Norway I had told my parents that
everything was great with James and the job was cool. If none of
it were true and I did not want to go home and tell anyone what
had happened, besides I did not have any money to go home and no
job to return to.
I stayed on with the company to prove to James that
I was better than he thought, that I did not care, that I could
make money, then leave with my pride. Maybe I thought James would
come back to me and say he was sorry. I stayed, all the time wanting
more and more to go home.
But it was not easy to leave. The company never allowed
us to be alone, we had no time for a personal life or private thoughts.
If you got sick, they did everything to try and get you to go out,
even if all you did was sit the van. When you were on the telephone
you never knew if your roommate would listen and report to the managers.
It was like the school mobbning, only worse because it went on 7
days a week.
We had Sundays off, but at 10:00 in the evening we
had to dress up in our best clothes and attend a big sales meeting,
during which we had to put all our positive goals for the next week
in writing. To begin the managers gave out diamond rings to the
top salesmen, then they criticized the underachievers. Once a guy
yawned in the meeting and they made him squawk like a chicken as
punishment.
They got everyone to make jokes about what had happened
on Saturday night, prying into your personal life. If someone picked
up someone at the disco, they always wanted to the know the details.
It was supposed to be funny, but it was sick.
But there was no one with whom I could talk, because
the company rules did not allow negative conversations.
Every time I tried to quit, the more the managers
yelled. 'No you can't stop, you're so good.' They told James. He
came to me one night and I told him I had to go because I missed
my friends back home. He got really angry. "You don't really
have any friends back there, all your so-called friends are whores
and losers, if you back you'll be just another loser working as
a waitress for the rest of you life." I stood there sobbing,
hurting with all my soul, then suddenly he took me in his arms and
was tender. I gave myself to him again.
Nothing had really changed though. James did not
love me and never had. A few days later I told him to send me a
bill for any money I owed the company. I was leaving. This time
he went crazy, threw me on the bed and said he did not know why
he should not hit me. I said I would stay, but it was only because
I was afraid.
In the end I had to lie to get home. I said my grandmother
was sick in the hospital. I don't think they believed me. James
and the Company took three months from my life. I lost 8 kilo's
and came home feeling terrible inside. My parents mother and father
do not understand what happened to me.
At the end of my time with the Company I met a regular
guy who was just there employed just three weeks. We were happy
together for a short time. He lives in another part of the country,
so we cannot meet. But we still talk on the telephone sometimes.
It helps to have someone who understand a little of the nightmare
I went through.
Freedomofmind.com fully supports religious
freedom and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The fact that a person’s name or group appears on our website
does not necessarily mean they are a destructive mind control cult.
They appear because we have received inquiries and have established
a file on the group.
The Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc. was established by cult expert Steve Hassan.
