The Lure of Self-Help
The school secretary handed me a stack of brochures and a list with a dozen names and addresses. I had been teaching at this school for a few years now and I knew they urgently needed to increase the number of students. Apparently it had gone from well over a thousand to just a few hundred students in about ten years. But this seemed desperate.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘A list of parents who have shown interest in our school,’ she said. ‘Go to these addresses, hand them the brochures and answer their questions.’
She then explained that the other teachers had also received a list of addresses, so I didn’t have much of a choice.
‘What if they’re not there?’ I said.
‘Go back and try again.’
‘Alright, no problem.’
I’d already decided how to deal with this issue: I’d get up early next Saturday morning and visit the whole list in one go. If the parents weren’t around, I’d simply put the brochure in their mailbox and let them figure it out.
That Saturday morning, with some help from Google Maps, I found the first address. I got out of my car and enjoyed the fresh sea breeze as I went up to the place. It was a small apartment near the beach. Not the kind of place where you’d expect a big family. I rang the bell. No one answered, so I dropped the brochure in the mailbox and continued the journey.
The next address was within walking distance. It was another apartment. I went up to the front door as the wind swung it back and forth. Someone had removed both the door handle and the lock, and the white paint looked like twenty years of wind and rain had been chipping away at it. For a brief moment, the wind blew the door open and the smell of cigarettes wafted in my face. The doorway seemed dark and abandoned. Everything about this place seemed off. I looked at the doorbell. The buttons were broken and it had electrical wires sticking out of the side. With the decision taken out of my hands, I breathed a sigh of relief and typed in the next address on the list.
The next address was an apartment directly facing the beach with a pub on the first floor. I went up to the owner, explained why I was here and asked him about the name on the list.
He stroked his beard. ‘Yeah, he’s on the seventh floor. But he doesn’t have any kids, though.’
That’s when I realised: they’d given me a list of random addresses. Not that it mattered much. I was here anyway and the weather was pretty good, so I decided to fulfil my duty. But I seriously doubted whether it would do us any good.
I went to several more places. No one around.
The last address was a bit further away in a residential area. I rang the bell and two parents opened the door. They were friendly, but they looked confused. Still, I was happy: these were the only parents I’d seen that entire morning.
I introduced myself and told them that I’m handing out brochures for our school, and that if they had any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
They accepted the brochure and said, ‘We’ve already enrolled our twelve-year-old into her favourite school of choice, but who knows, maybe it’s something for our nine-year-old to look at in a couple of years.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your weekend.’
Next Monday, I asked the school secretary about that list.
‘Who told you these were families with kids?’
She gave me a shrug and said, ‘That’s what the principal told me.’
A little while later, I asked someone a little higher up on the food chain.
She shook her head and gave a big sigh. ‘She probably asked around and someone gave her an old list for free. Pointless. Which is exactly why I told her to spend some money on a fresh list.’
A few months later, it had turned summer. A new maths teacher had joined the school. Let’s call her Jane. She had invited me and the school secretary, Catherine, to come visit her new place. After showing us her newly decorated living room, we sat down and talked for a little while. Then she suddenly brought up the fact that she had bought these new plastic Tupperware tubs for her meal prep.
Jane handed one of the plastic pots to Catherine. ‘I use this one for my chicken and I use that one to store my nuts.’
Catherine played around with the plastic lid.
Jane then handed her another plastic pot. ‘They also have this one for salads.’
Catherine nodded with a polite smile on her face, while she kept popping the lids on and off. ‘My mom used to have these. They never wear out, do they?’
‘No, they don’t,’ Jane acknowledged. ‘Did you know that they have a lifetime warranty?’
‘Makes sense,’ Catherine said with a straight face. ‘They look pretty sturdy.’
Catherine was a woman in her early fifties. She had enough life experience to know what was going on. She was simply being kind by playing along.
‘If you’re interested,’ Jane said, ‘I’m having a Tupperware party next Friday. There’ll be some stuff to look at. But don’t buy anything if you don’t want to! In any case, there’ll be snacks and drinks, and it’s probably mostly going to be women, so it’s going to be a fun time regardless.’ She then briefly mentioned something about discounts and that each sale earned her a small commission.
‘Next Friday?’ Catherine said. ‘Sure, why not.’
Jane gave me a smile. ‘You could come too if you’d like.’
‘Not my cup of tea,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’
I already knew that Tupperware was a multi-level marketing scheme, but I simply kept my mouth shut. I wondered whether she understood that selling plastic pots was never going to get her all that much money, that the big money comes from building a downline of others who sell plastic pots for you. It takes a shark to be successful in multi-level. Jane, the loving mother of two young children, with her authentic wide-open smile all the time, simply wasn’t that kind of person.
I understood why the principal did what she did. The school was desperate for more students. So she made a plan. Just not a very good one. She grabbed a list, printed some brochures, and delegated the work. It looked and felt like we were doing something productive, but delivering brochures to empty apartments serves no useful purpose.
I also understood why Jane did what she did. The MLM found her at a fragile point in her life: new home, new job, young kids. But selling plastic pots was never going to be the solution.
‘Here’s a plan,’ someone tells you. ‘Just follow this plan and all your dreams will come true.’
So you put in the hours, thinking that all that effort is going to get you somewhere.
That’s the lure. Not the promise of success, but the hope of moving forward.