Queen of Rambles

My life is so insane right now that I can’t even think straight. I finished most of the things on my to-do list yesterday, but not all of them. I forgot to add “call my mom to wish her happy birthday” which took an hour of my time. I still am running like crazy and have so many things I want to post about (Pirate Party–Fun! Meeting new LJ person in person first–Fun! Mama drama–Not so Fun! Cute Erik pictures–Fun! I think Erik said “I found my brush”–Whoa!) but I have to limit myself to the essentials. I hope I’ll be able to calm down next week.

Today is all about my shining moment. I am usually all about the confrontation avoidance, but once I get pissed off WATCH OUT! I’m a woman on a mission (just ask the Target lady who refused to help me yesterday–yet another story).

Quitting Mary Kay has not been as easy as saying “I’m done! Bye-bye!” because I am a greedy, greedy woman and want all the money I can get. The MK repurchase program only gives you back 90% wholesale on actual retail products, which means I’m losing 10% on all my wholesale purchases plus all my non-wholesale purchases (make-up samples, etc). In an effort to staunch the flow of cash, I’ve been selling items for 40% of retail. My director has a “full store” because you “can’t sell from an empty wagon,” so I’ve just been getting products from her to fulfill the orders. I don’t want to have anything to do with her, but when it comes to money I’m willing to suck it up and deal with her.

I thought our final meeting was supposed to take place last week but she totally blindsided me and didn’t want to take any product from me that day even though I had it all loaded up in my car and was ready to do business. She was just stringing me along to delay the inevitable.

She came over today and I was prepared! There would be no hand holding! There would be no dilly-dallying. I set the tone by sending her a very stern e-mail outlining exactly what I expected from our meeting along with the actual dollar amounts we were dealing with. I had a big event this morning, so I was dressed nicely and had my hair all done up. I was confident, competent, and professional.

When she arrived I walked her over to the dining room table, showed her my Exel spreadsheet and told her what she needed to do.

She tried to make small talk, but I kept her on track. She tried to start doing math calculations on a sheet of paper, but I noticed the last time I let her do the math I was shorted some cash. Either she is sly or stupid, I’m not sure wish. I pulled out my calculator, sat next to her and showed her exactly how I was doing the math. She seemed put out by my aggression.

The last time I saw her she didn’t try to talk me out of quitting, but I wasn’t fooled. As Emee said, she was just getting ready to lay on the guilt.

First she pulled out the “why don’t you just send out this list to all your friends and let them know you are selling everything at a discount!” I was happy to tell her I’d already done so and had actually had pretty good luck with that. That segued nicely into her next point.

If you’ve done so well with the sale, you could continue selling things for a lower price!

That’s when I got to use my favorite line. Bwhahahaha.

“Sorry, but if I want to volunteer my time I’ll pick a cause I believe in. I joined MK to make money, not make other people rich.”

She was stymied.

Then it was all about “you don’t really need to send it all back! You could just slowly sell it off so you continue to get the discount.” Side note: You only get the consultant discount if you place a $200 order every third month.

I gave her my best raised eyebrow and swept my hand over toward my pile of pink crap. “Do you realize how much money I’ll be getting back?” I asked. “I look at that pile of pink and see a trip. How can I justify keeping it all?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

I ushered her out the door a mere twenty minutes after she arrived and it felt good! She made sure to tell me that I need to call her before I send my inventory back so she can take some notes. Ha! As she so often told me, I am an independent business woman. I have zero obligation to call her. I don’t plan on ever talking to her again. She just wants to know how much commission she’s losing and I have no desire to give her a head’s up.

I am so relieved to be free and so happy that I finally showed some moxie.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.