How university graduates are being lured into direct sales jobs
Former contractors who worked for direct sales companies have revealed how they were forced to work 80 hours a week, without taking breaks, for no base salary, in an eye-opening BBC Three documentary.
The Dark Side of Direct Sales, which aired last night, shed a light on the ‘toxic’ conditions that some university graduates across the UK have been working in.
The documentary claimed companies relied on contracts that stated workers were not ’employees’ but ‘contractors’ in order to offer them no protection under the guise of them being self-employed, while enforcing a culture that shamed them for taking proper breaks or not working six days a week.
After being sold an ‘Instagram’ Wolf of Wall Street lifestyle, some young workers were told their long hours and low pay would ultimately be worth it as they would end up as their own business owners.
Speaking in the documentary, employment lawyer Luke Menzies told journalist Lora Jones that the workers were being ‘exploited’ by direct companies benefiting from a legal grey area.
Former contractors who worked at direct sales company have revealed they were sold a lie and forced to work 80h a week, without taking breaks, for no base salary in an eye-opening BBC III documentary. Matt, from Nottingham, was making so little money while on the job that he couldn’t afford shampoo
COULDN’T AFFORD SHAMPOO AFTER EARNING JUST £7,600 IN ONE YEAR IN ‘CULT’ TYPE COMPANY
Matt, a salesman, said he had worked at a direct sales company fresh from university in 2018 in Nottingham.
He said that he was told he would be sales and marketing junior executive, with the possibility to make ‘six figures a year’ within six to nine months of joining the business as the manager of his own company.
He said he was immediately ‘hooked’, revealing people who work in these positions are often sold a particular lifestyle.
He said: ‘It’s a lifestyle that sold to you. That sort of Instagram lifestyle, entrepreneur, hard worker, grafter, etc, etc.
Matt said he felt the company had a ‘culty’ mentality and sold people on the salesperson’s lifestyle, but that the reality for very different
‘It’s the Wolf of Wall Street mentality. Everyone who comes into the industry loves that movie, so you have to create the illusion of success. ‘
Matt said he was only made aware that his role was a self-employed position without a base salary on his first day on the job.
‘About halfway through day one, they brought out the forms, which included a self-employment form. a declaration of self-employment, etc etc,
‘And it was a t that point where someone kind of piped up and went: “So what’s the basic hourly?”
‘And then they were like “oh you get paid this much per sale”,’ he said.
Meanwhile he revealed his managers told him how he should be dressing and behaving, adding: ‘If you’re a guy, you have to wear a suit, tie and dress shoes, all the time.’
‘We were told don’t smoke roll ups, proper cigs only, make sure your car was cleaned, hair, beard.
‘I had a man bun when I first started and I was taken to one side and told, “That’s not ownership material.'”
Eventually, Matt was told he would be doing door-to-door sales and standing in the street – and that, with no base salary, he would only be earning based on commission of those sales.
He said: ‘It wasn’t what it was described to me as.’
As time passed, Matt began to struggle financially and said he was left in a dire situation.
In his year working at the company, he explained he made just £7,900 in total.
He said: ‘I was maxed out on credit card, loan was gone, overdraft was gone, I was absolutely skint.’
He recounted things came to a head after his manager commented on his appearance, which he was struggling to upkeep amid his financial woes.
He continued: ‘My leader, one time he pulled me aside and said “Mate, what the eff, your hair looks like… You look like garbage” basically.’
Matt said he burst into tears and admitted to his leader that he couldn’t afford shampoo or hair gel.
He explained: ‘So I’d had to use like hand soap to try and make it look decent.’
He also spoke of the culture at his direct sales company, which took part in something called ‘Super Challenge Friday,’ where staff make bets on how much more they can sell than one another.
As part of the contest, Matt said when he lost to another worker he was forced to cut his hair. Meanwhile, another worker was slapped with a fish.
‘You realise it’s weird, but because you’re in that bubble, it normalises itself,’ he explained.
But he added that his direct sales company operated with a cult-like mentality, saying: ‘It’s very culty, Because it’s so prescriptive and they used such personal things against you if you disagree.
‘You’ve got people who are exhausted, not eating properly, probably don’t have that much money.
‘And you’re saying, “We have all the answers if you do these very specific things….
“By the way, if you won’t do these specific things, you will not hit your goals and achieve your dreams”.
‘In terms of people looking out for you, there’s no one. But you still have a uniform set working hours and set expectations,’ Matt said.
‘So it’s all the bad points of self-employment, with all the bad points of employment,’ he added.
SHAMED FOR TAKING TOILET BREAKS WHILE ON HER PERIOD BY A MALE MANAGER
Meanwhile, Lauren, a bartender from London, joined a similar direct sales company at the age of 18 during the Covid-19 pandemic after having an interview with a female manager.
She said: ‘She was selling it like it was a dream job and she just said if you put in the work, you won’t be on the door for long.’
Lauren said she was made aware the role was ‘commission only’, but said the way this was explained to her was not clear.
She said: ‘I didn’t really have an understanding of what commission only was at the time, because the way she explained it was “you get paid for your hard work”.
‘She said, “People nowadays especially during Covid, they get paid for doing nothing, it’s kind of lazy”.’
‘They would really talk down on people who had normal jobs and normal lives,’ she recounted.
‘If you had a nice life you were seen as less than, because they just made you feel as if these kind of people do not want to be successful.’
She recounted the tough awakening she faced in her first week days on the job.
‘The first day, I was put with my leader and she just started running and I remember feeling super confused,’ she said, ‘like physically running from each door to door.’
She remembered being told: ‘We have to run because the plan is when you do it, 100 doors equals four sales, and you can’t be on a door for longer than three seconds.’
Lauren, from London, revealed she was shamed for taking a break after having an ‘accident’ with her period and not being able to change her sanitary products for hours
Lauren recounted how somedays she would be running from door to door for eight hours, with no lunch break.
She said: ‘I remember midway through, I said to her, “When do we eat? When do we get to the toilet?”
‘She said: “I don’t tend to take breaks because, like, I’m missing sell time.”‘
The saleswoman said this demanding regime left her exhausted, adding: ‘I came into the office limping because my feet were swollen, my actual feet were swollen from the consistent running.’
After three days on the job, Lauren got her period, saying: ‘Cramps were times a thousands, legs were swollen, back was killing me.
‘I still went in and the plan was for me to change [my period product] on the train.
However, her team and her leader for the day were sent on the Tube, where she found no toilets.
She recalled: ‘I had an accident and I could feel it.
‘I’m like begging like, “Please find somewhere for me to change.”
She claimed she was not allowed to look for a nearby toilet on her phone, but that her male leader eventually relented and found her a place.
‘He was just being so rude to me, he said, “You’re not giving 100 per cent. Do you even want this? Do you want your mum to retire? Do you want to live this life?”
She said the manager told her, ‘your period can’t stop you,’ and told her ‘excuses, excuses’ when she mentioned her blistered, painful feet.
Lauren agreed that the company she worked out was cult-like, saying the other salespeople ‘would worship my managing director.’
She added she was told ‘we don’t complained about things we can’t control’ after stating the weather was cold one day.
‘Nothing I did in that job role was on my own terms,’ Lauren said. ‘It’s scary, because that’s how they operate.’
SPENT £2,000 PAYING TO GO ON WORK TRIPS IN JUST THREE MONTHS
Mollie, a makeup artist who worked at a direct sales company for three months in 2018 in Sheffield, said the company made it look like these tough working condition were ‘self-inflicted.’
She said she worked 80 hours, six days a week, but only earned £100 for her trouble.
She said: ‘I was so scared of failing and letting everybody down. It was so hard to be able to think that, “This is toxic, this isn’t how it should be.” I was brainwashed.’
‘They make it sound like it’s not that big of a deal, that you’re just working constantly,’ she added.
‘They’d make it sound like if you didn’t come in on the Saturday, even though you’re self-employed and you’re supposed to be able to choose your own hours, they make it seem like, “Well you’re not going to make it where you need to be, are you?”,’ she explained.
Mollie said the company she worked for made her feel her tough working hours were ‘self-inflicted’
Mollie, from Sheffield said she earned £100 a week on the jib, but funded £2,000 worth of work field trips out of town out of her own pocket
‘When I said to them, “You know, like, could I just not show up one day? If I’m self-employed I could choose to have a day off?”
‘They were like, “I mean you can, there is nothing stopping you from doing it, but we’d all be disappointed”,’ she claimed.
‘If you can’t show up and you can’t work your six days, you can’t work your full hours, as was one of the pillars, then you can’t own your own business,’ she explained.
In spite of her hard graft, Mollie added she ended up spending her own money on out-of-town trips to do more sells.
‘I blew about £2,000 in like [work] road trips and stuff,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I made that in the whole three months I was there.’
Her dire situation meant that Mollie had to borrow money from family.
‘I think I was really selling the dreams that I was sold and saying, “It’s only going to be like a week, I’ll make this back in a month, you know you’ll have your money back and I’ll be paying for your life. I’ll be buying you all the nice stuff, finally.”
‘And it’s four years later and I still haven’t paid them back.’
WORKED 14 HOUR DAYS, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK
Robbie, from Glasgow said he was left ‘exhausted’ by the job, which he said ‘chews you up and spits you out’
Robbie, a former direct sales agent from Glasgow, worked in a similar company for seven months in 2019.
He said: ‘By the end, it was pretty grim. Exhausted is the best word for it, You’re so dead.’
‘You’re told you can work as many days as you want, but you’re forced to work six days, 14 hours each day.
‘It’s crazy, it just chews you up and spits you out,’ he added.
Lawyer speaks out on ‘deeply misleading’ job adverts and ‘exploitative’ contracts
Lora had employment lawyer Luke look at one of the contracts, as well as testimonials from the people she interviewed for the documentary.
‘These young people, from what I’ve seen, are being exploited. It was interesting to hear that they recognised they could, in theory push back.
However, the huge pressure on them, and I would say the manipulation, means that they’re not in a position to really be able to do so because of the consequences.’
Looking through adverts for the jobs in direct sales, he called them ‘deeply misleading.’
The lawyer added that people who have signed these contracts find themselves into ‘a murky area, where you’ve signed a contract which says that you’re not an employee.’
Lora had employment lawyer Luke Menzies look at one of the contracts, as well as testimonials from the people she interviewed for the documentary.
‘And clearly this business will be saying you’re not an employee,’ he said.
However, there was still one way in which workers could challenge their direct sales companies.
‘It seems to me, from what I’ve seen, that they would have to right to go to an employment tribunal and say, “I want my national minimum wage, I want my holidays,” whatever it may be. And they would have a rights to bring that claim,’ he said.
‘Legally it’s going to be the directors of these specific individual businesses that sign up with the young people in these sales agreements,’ he said.
‘And it seems to me that they may be encouraging people to work with them to set up a series of separate companies which are then in the firing line, if anyone wants to claim based on their employment rights, so it’s a clever move,’ Luke added.
Labout MP for Bristol North West and Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee Darren Jones said in the documentary: ‘They are being exploited because they think they’re signing up for an exciting job with a good salary that give them prospects.
‘And then actually when they arrive at the office they’re told they’re self-employed, commission only, door-to-door salespeople that have to pay their own expenses.
‘It seems clear to me that the law needs updating,’ he added.
‘The government just for reasons I do not understand, have not prioritised bringing forward legislation.
A government spokesperson said: ‘exploitative practices have no pace in our society.
‘Last month, July 2022, we introduced new employment status guidance, which acts as a one-stop-shop for businesses and individuals to understand which employment rights apply to them.’
The Dark Side of Direct Sales is available on iPlayer.
