Wherever You Go, There They Are

by Annabelle Gurwitch

  I’m a sucker for sisterhood.

  what price sisterhood now?

  Someone has traced Wash Me on the windshield of the station wagon that’s parked in the driveway of a single-story house in a middle-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. Stickers on the car’s bumper include a peace sign subtly doubling as the letter O in One Earth and an unambiguous Unfuck the World! There’s a poster for a benefit to save Darfur, circa 2009, resting against a pot of what once were daisies on the front porch. Whoever these people are, they seem like people I would know.

  I’m here because of an invitation from Funny E-mail Name. Funny E-mail Name is one of those cute addresses left over from that time when the arrival of an e-mail was reason for giddy celebration and novel enough to inspire the Hollywood blockbuster You’ve Got Mail. I was so sure that I’d never forget who’d thought up this hilarious moniker that I neglected to enter their contact information into my address book. Nowadays, I ignore half the e-mails that clog my inbox, but I couldn’t resist opening this one because the subject line read: Help a Sister Out. In a nutshell, it read: “Most of you know what I’m going through and might even be sick of hearing about it. I’m tired of shaking the can and I am starting my own health and wellness business to raise money for my son’s medical expenses. Please consider doing your shopping with my family.” Above a glossy shot of a young man with gravity-defying checkbones in a wheelchair were the words “This is my son.” “This is my store” was printed above the logo for a skin care company that rhymes with the words “far gone.” It was signed Love, Cindy.

  I can think of a number of Cindys who this might be. There’s a casting director, the former girlfriend of a former boyfriend, two Cindys who were administrators of a theater company I worked with twenty years ago, and four Cindys on my list of Facebook friends whom I can’t remember if I know personally or are friends of friends. But a sister in need? How could I refuse her invitation?

  I’m a sucker for the sisterhood. I was one of those girls whose mothers subscribed to Ms. magazine, even if they themselves weren’t living examples of Gloria Steinem’s brand of feminism. Unless she shacks up with Ann Coulter, Steinem will always be my leader, and I’m pleased that signs of sisterly solidarity abound in ways less enervating than leaning in.

  I was kicking my antidepressant before trying to get pregnant and my husband was out of town. Nauseous and shaking uncontrollably, I was curled up in the fetal position on the cold bathroom tiles by the time my friend Juel made it over.* She fed me soup, got me into the shower, and tucked me into bed. You could call it lean on feminism.

  When my son was born with medical problems, my Los Angeles girlfriends pumped milk for him. My sisters have provided shelter, lent jewelry and shoulders to cry on, and made middle-of-the-night fried chicken runs for me. So when Cindy invoked the call to “help a sister out,” she was speaking my language. Whichever Cindy she might have been.

  The door opens and Cindy, late fifties, looks familiar but I still can’t place her. She’s got dream catchers hanging from the ceiling and her bookshelves are crammed full of books, a positive sign.* A patio leads to a yard with rows of vegetables. When I see chicken coops, I know I’ve never been to this house, because I would have remembered chickens.

  Cindy’s sponsor in this new venture is a smartly dressed, square-shaped matron with matching everything, impeccably manicured nails, and bold sculptural jewelry. She’s an Anna Wintour-esque blonde who seems a bit out of place in Cindy’s hippy-dippy abode. She asks the ten or so of us who have answered the call to introduce ourselves. I will come to learn that in the Fargone lingo (as well as that of other multilevel marketing companies), this is something called your WHY. The majority of us have come to support Cindy, but one or two say they’re looking to get into the wellness business. Sponsor Blonde tells us that she is using her business (no one ever calls this a sales job) to fund charitable pursuits. She’s interested in cancer research, and it’s with great pride that she announces that the company’s nutrition line has been endorsed by the Mayo Clinic. We all clap. The Mayo Clinic endorsement is impressive.*

  Sponsor Blonde launches into an overview of our amazing opportunity to get into the thirty-four-billion-dollar skin care business. It’s an industry, we learn, we are already in.

  “Every time we recommend a movie or a product we like, we’re in the network marketing business. The only difference between you and me is that I’m getting a check for recommending products I personally use. It’s the future! Everyone needs toothpaste. Everyone needs shampoo, right?”

  She’s right about that. Everyone does need toothpaste and shampoo. Now we’re all nodding our heads. The promise of extra income “without affecting our focus on our artistic pursuits” is tantalizing. More clapping.

  Sponsor Blonde turns the floor over to Cindy. Cindy is a whiskey-voiced earth mother, with bare feet, a caftan, a glorious mess of long hair, and those same gravity-defying cheekbones as the young man in the e-mail. She wears little makeup and radiates warmth. She tells us her WHY, which includes her son’s motorcycle accident the year before and how hard life is for him, being paralyzed from the waist down, how much effort is involved and how expensive his care is for the family. When she says that work has dried up in nonprofits, I’m able to place her as one of the theater Cindys. She says at her age, late fifties, she doesn’t think it possible that she’ll find full-time work again. She’s been working as a personal assistant and organizer. We nod in agreement. Everyone in the room is either a freelancer or looking for a midlife reinvention. We share her economic insecurity. She’s so genuinely unaffected, she admits to not really knowing what she’s doing with Fargone, but she’s using the “yummy” anti-aging creams and swears that the food supplements are keeping her son alive.

  Sponsor Blonde tops her moving endorsement with the news that Cindy, who has been in the business less than two months, is already moving up to the next level, where she’ll get even higher commissions on everything we purchase, and is poised to get all kinds of great benefits, including a free white Mercedes.*

  “I am?” Cindy asks.

  “Yes!” says Sponsor Blonde. “The health and wellness business is booming and Cindy’s success is assured because everybody needs toothpaste and shampoo.” Even more clapping. It’s very intoxicating in a “You go, girl” way.

  One of the women, already a customer, shares that she keeps a bag of Fargone caramel snacks in her purse. They are delicious, she tells us, but she wants to know how many she can safely take per day. Sponsor Blonde fields the question of caramel snack dosage with a practiced authority that suggests she is prescribing a course of antibiotics.

  “As part of your healthy diet, you should keep them in your purse and take five or six daily as quick pick-me-ups.”

  I do a quick Google search of the snack’s ingredients on my phone and find I have to agree with Dr. Blonde. Candy really does provide a quick pick-me-up.*

  We’re invited to check out the products catalogue and Sponsor Blonde breezes through an enticing but completely confusing set of commission percentages that represent the financial freedom we will enjoy as we attain various levels within the company. For a multilevel marketing company, it’s a relatively inexpensive buy-in, with a $79 annual fee to become a consultant, but both the company and consultants recommend that you personally try everything, so most will end up investing more. One attendee says she’s ready to sign up and plunks down $1,300 for the anti-aging line on the spot.

  The Fargone name seems familiar, but I can’t figure out why, so I ask Cindy how she got connected to the biz. Sponsor Blonde and Blondie’s sponsor, a dynamo of the local Fargone ranks with an impressive array of university degrees, got wind of her son’s condition and they took the time to meet with her at a bar on New Year’s Day, no less. Cindy was touched by their concern and offer to help.

  Me too, I want to help too. But the last thing I need is another
product. I carefully stretch thimbleful applications of a less expensive skin care line that I purchase from Karen, another local mom and a licensed aesthetician, who works out of her converted garage/studio. I’ve been a customer for seven years, and Karen’s income supports her middle schooler and her husband, who is working on his contractor’s license. I buy toothpaste and shampoo from Anonymous Sales Associate with Chalky Pink Lipstick at my local CVS, and she might have children and a husband with a fledgling business to support as well. But when Cindy’s son wheels by, pokes his head in, and sheepishly waves, I feel compelled to buy a product, and not the cheapest one like I planned before showing up.

  When I go home, I check out the company website. “The Fargone family is made up of thousands of individuals working to make their dreams come true.” There’ s no mistaking that message: we’re in this together. The site features testimonials from consultants. Their WHYs are variations of needing to make money and craving flexible hours. Former nurses and teachers testify to all the quality time they have with their families now that Fargone has freed them from the yoke of their former employment. It sounds ideal, except when you stop to consider what the world would look like if everyone followed this model. We’d all be spending quality time homeschooling our children and learning how to perform appendectomies in our kitchens because schools and hospitals would be completely understaffed.*

  Then I realize why the Fargone name sounds familiar. Sure enough, I’ve got a flyer with the company logo, a colorful mash-up of a daisy chain and the McDonald’s logo, crumpled up in my purse.* Earlier in the week, I saw a play and went for drinks afterward with Lara, one of the actresses, and her cheering posse, all members of her “downline.” That’s multilevel marketing lingo for Lara’s “team,” people she’s recruited to sell the products and from whose earnings she collects a percentage. The flyer is an invitation to an introductory meet-up at a private club in Beverly Hills. I’d stuffed it into my purse and completely forgotten about it. That’s two friends in one week inviting me to join up.

  I’d always associated these schemes with bored housewives peddling Mary Kay cosmetics to their neighbors for mad money in the mid-twentieth century. But it makes sense that this model has made it to Hollywood. Productions now shoot in far-flung cities where producers hire cheaper crews and local performers in supporting roles, leaving actors and crew members who for decades earned solidly middle-class wages, not to mention the dry cleaners, caterers, gardeners, and even dog walkers that depend on their trickle-down dollars, in the dust.

  Over lunch, I ask my inner circle if they’ve been recruited. Mishna, an actress, says she’s been bombarded with exhortations to host parties for friends’ multilevel marketing launches. Barbara, a designer, has been deluged with invitations to attend trunk parties for Cabi, an MLM (acronym for “multilevel marketing”) clothing line. Kendall, a writer, is dodging calls from someone who wants her to come to a Stella and Dot—yet another MLM company—costume jewelry trunk party.

  “One of the selling points is that you get a big discount on costume jewelry, but how much costume jewelry does one person need?” Kendall asks.

  “But if someone makes the product themselves, that’s different,” Mishna adds. “I’m more likely to spend money.”

  “Me too,” I agree, “but are we punishing people for not being crafty?”

  “I was given the hard sell by a friend who told me I need to be using the Fargone lipsticks because I’m ingesting chemicals with the brand I wear,” Kendall tells us. “Meanwhile, she’s got a face full of fillers and Botox.”

  “Okay, but what if she had a job at a department store and was selling to strangers—is that better or worse?” I ask.

  No one has an answer.

  Christine, who works at a nonprofit, tells of an out-of-touch acquaintance who kept suggesting they catch up. Plans were eventually made, but when she showed up for what she thought was a dinner date, she was handed a sign-in sheet. It was a recruiting party for Nerium, another skin care product MLM. She gets nervous now when she hears from someone who wants to “catch up.”

  At the same time, each of us has been feeling so pinched that we’ve given an MLM real consideration. Mishna is making ends meet by renting out her home on Airbnb. When a good offer comes in, she and her partner, daughter, and two dogs move into a lower-priced short-term rental and pocket the difference.

  These franchapreneurial opportunities* are not just sweeping through my Hollywood-adjacent community; over 18 million people are working in multilevel marketing in the U.S. alone, up from 15.6 million in 2011. Women make up 78 percent of the sales force, so MLMs know who they are marketing to. Network marketing, as it’s also referred to, is experiencing a resurgence in what’s being called the gig economy. Women over fifty have some of the highest rates of underemployment in the U.S., so coupled with the ability to cast a wide net on social media, it’s a perfect storm.

  I’m so shaken by this window into the fragility of both the economy and the sisterhood that I e-mail former labor secretary Robert Reich, who is a friend, to ask if he is worried about the trend.

  “The gig economy plays a role here. It’s all a rip-off, as far as I can tell. Have you looked at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk? We’re back to the piecework of the late nineteenth century.”

  Reading his e-mail, I realize that I have very limited personal experience with the gig economy, other than being an Uber customer. I thought I was in the gig economy, but as I earn my living in something I’ve trained to do, I’m technically a freelancer. The gig economy generally refers to juggling part-time jobs as an independent contractor, often in unrelated fields, and I’ve never even heard of Amazon Mechanical Turk.

  The Turk is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace where employers, referred to as “requesters,” advertise to workers, called “providers.” The tasks to be performed are called HITs, Human Intelligence Tasks, and are primarily writing product descriptions or transcription services. Turk is named for a chess-playing “computer machine.” It was an elaborate hoax designed to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the late eighteenth century, in which a human chess master hid inside a contraption—sort of a precursor to the IBM Deep Blue challenge matches.

  Providers test into a ratings system to qualify for the highest-paying jobs. Whatever else you’ve done in your life counts for nothing in this system. It is essentially an equal playing field open for workers around the globe, which means you’re competing for jobs with people whose expectation of wages might be significantly lower than yours. Another way to move up in the system is to do jobs in exchange for ratings—essentially a stint in the world’s most unglamorous, faceless, soul-sucking internship program. Here is an example of the kind of employment an entry-level provider can vie for: filling out a survey on the People’s Party of Spain’s position on minimum wage. The estimated time in which to complete the task is one hour. The compensation: three dollars.*

  Out of the 656,848 HITs advertised, one of the few I am qualified to even apply for is a transcription gig. Thinking I am one clever provider, I decide to cut out the middleman and go straight to the website of Speechpad; that’s the requester. The rates are exactly the same as the ones advertised on Amazon. Oh, well. There is a project requiring the transcription of twenty-two minutes of audio. The time allotted is two hours and five minutes, and the pay is 25 cents a minute with no overtime. That translates into an hourly wage of roughly fifteen dollars, provided that you can complete the task in the time allotted.

  I sign up for the online qualifying test. First, I slog through a lengthy set of instructions illustrating acceptable standards of every imaginable configuration of grammar. It includes a collection of the most provocative grouping of sentences I’ve seen in one place. I am not making these up:

  Felix was a lonely, young boy. Not lonelier than I am as I sit here at my “workstation.”

  Merchant owes vendor 13,656
,000. If you’ve ever wondered what incites others to want to overthrow a government or turn to a life of crime, I can offer some insight. I feel stirrings of violence as I try to calculate how many hours of work at 25 cents a minute I’d have to make to earn 13,656,000. It’s simply irresponsible to include a number that ginormous on a practice test for low-wage providers.

  51% of people voted but only 6% were counted. The instructions warn over and over that you are not to contact Speechpad’s clients, but I am willing to risk my 25 cents a minute to find out what election these percentages were culled from, who collected this statistic, and how the “requesting” organization feels about what appears to be a documented case of voter fraud.

  I start transcribing my five-sentence test paragraph, estimated to take two minutes, at nine p.m. I’m not a millennial, so I have trouble working the link and the sound keeps cutting out, and it takes me about ten minutes to get the playback to work. I play the text over and over. It’s challenging to focus my brain on a subject I am unfamiliar with, some kind of technical description of a telescope. Here is my transcription:

  The James Web [How many B’s?] Space Telescope is a project of NASA, the space agency [Is there another NASA? Do I really need to include “the space agency”?], with international cooperation from the European and Canadian space agencies. [Had to listen to that three times; is there really a Canadian space agency? With Trudeau in office, who’d want to leave the planet? LOL.]

  James Webb features a 21 feet diameter SOMETHING and a primary mirror that will orbit the planet in tandem from a perch of SOMEWHERE at SOME DISTANCE for SOME AMOUNT OF TIME at an ASTRONOMICAL COST. [Can I just put that, because it’s kind of funny, right?]

  At 9:36 p.m., I submit my sample, and in less than the time it takes for me to hit the submit button, I get rejected for a 25-cent-a-minute gig.