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DO you want to earn £300 to £600 a week? Do you like talking to people? Cash? Lies? Well go for an interview with one of Glasgow’s many scumbag marketing companies!

You’ll enjoy head-scratching activities during the interview such as: ‘Trying unsuccessfully to find out how much you’ll be paid.’, ‘Being taught to use the exact same pitch, in the exact same tone of voice, with everyone’, and ‘Having your ego built up so that you think you’ll work your way up the pyramid’.

Sorry. Not pyramid, just the next level.

The formula works like this: the company’s entire salesforce are paid not only for their own sales, but for those of their underlings. You start off going door to door, or selling things on the street, until you’re good enough to work your way up a level, then you have four people under you that earn you money with their work.

Zainab Magzoub, 20 – a student at Glasgow Clyde College – worked her way up to the second tier in one of these companies a few years ago.

She said: “I’d applied for a direct sales role, but was told it was a ‘marketing assistant’. The initial interview was short – around 20 minutes – and consisted of the ‘managing director’ asking boring questions about what I’d been up to and explaining the company without actually explaining it.

She was told she’d be contacted if she was successful – and was, two hours later. She had to be there for 8.30am the next day, and arrived to start her 90 minute wait with six other people.

She said: “A young guy in a suit walked out to speak to us. He explained that we’d be on an ‘observation day’, and would be heading out to Ardrossan.

“And when we got off the train at Ardrossan he sat me in the café and gave me tasks which took 20 minutes to complete - but he left me waiting for two hours.

(Image: Getty)

"While he was away the staff at the café had told me that he was there the day before with another interviewee. He’d left him waiting for five hours till the café closed and the guy didn’t have money to get food or get a train home. He’d to wait outside the café after it closed.”

Obviously, not all commission based jobs are bad. But the problem is, in a post-recession economy, scores of people are applying for the same job at once.

People have been out of work for months when they find their way to the door of these places. They’re often not suited to sales in the first place – it could even be their first job. Their ignorance is exploited; talk of wages is kept vague and waved away with vague assurances.

Luckily when I did this, I was fresh out of a sales role – albeit a much more legitimate one.

I walked around with Tam for a day. He told me stories about all the cash I’d make, and how he was planning on buying a beach house in the Philippines with all the money he was raking in. This job was the polar opposite to my old one.

We got out the car in a suburb somewhere in Paisley, and my 'sensei' excused himself, going over to urinate on a tree. He came back, wiping his hands on – what looked like his dad’s - brown suit, grinning: “Let’s do it!”

He psyched himself up, pumping his fists and practising his winning pitch on me: “Hi-how-you-doing-nothing serious. Did you get the letter we sent you about insulation? No? Definitely-sent a letter.”

Bouncing on the balls of his feet now. “You’ve got the opportunity to have your loft insulated for 40 per cent off the price, due to a government scheme.”

There was no letter. The Scottish Government have however been paying grants towards insulating your home for years. This year alone, they plan to make £65m available to Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities to develop fuel poverty programmes – mainly cavity wall insulation.

These companies tend to piggyback on the tenuous connection, relying on heavily implying their authority, rather than overtly declaring it.

We bothered bored housewives and confused pensioners all day, who were immediately on the back foot because of his weird pitch.

(Image: Getty)

I took a shot of a door, and introduced myself: “Hi, we’re from [Client]; just here to chat to you about a government scheme everyone in this area’s eligible for, that could save you money on your insulation.”

After a polite decline, Tam chided me for giving the name of the company upfront: “You can’t do that! It means if anything goes wrong they know it’s us!”

He nodded and winked sagaciously. Cavity wall insulation was one of the things we were selling and checking the levels of, so Tam carried about a big drill all day. The drill bit was stuck in it, so he had a hole in his bag with the drill bit poking out.

I’m still baffled as to why so many people let this guy drill holes in their walls. He laughed as he explained to me how careful he had to be not to poke unwanted holes in people’s walls, and recounted a few times he had done. I wondered if that’s why we weren’t to name the company…

We got to the kind of client I remembered from my insulation peddling days – an elderly man who’d qualify for the insulation for free. My favourite kind of client; I saw an opportunity to do some good.

But Tam whispered to me as the man left the room: “He could get this for free, but then I get less commission. You’ve got to be economical with the facts.” Another wink.

I was trying to think of an amicable way to quit outright on the spot an hour or so later, when Tam awkwardly interjected my awkward interjection: “So how you finding it man? Is this the career for you? You wanna work your way to the top?”

He started shadowboxing and vaguely pointing upwards to what I assumed was a metaphorical glass ceiling of sorts.

“Come under my wing and we’ll both be millionai-“

I awkwardly interjected for a final time: “No… you’re just going around conning people, really – and you’ve changed the subject every time I’ve asked about pay. This all seems pretty cult-like to me. Could I have my return for the train please?”

He handed over the ticket in disbelief, letting me know I was a fool, and missing out.

Now before you think I’m just overly moral and sensitive – or that I just hate money: I’m not the only person who’s had these experiences. A quick trawl online and you can find dozens who’ve been duped by these companies.

I could relate to the brainwashing tactics; that’s how they’d managed to dupe me on multiple occasions – I’m a sucker for a good brainwash.

The time I’d actually taken on one of those jobs for a few days before leaving with no money, I went to work on a Saturday. This is the scene that greeted me – a small room packed with 60+ 18-20 year olds in what looked like their dad’s suits, along with 20+ sad, defeated looking middle-aged men.

You know the type. Balding, short-sleeved, cheap shirts with ties. Cheesy house music was blaring – it was 8am! – and they all babbled excitedly, practising the same pitch.

I heard ‘Hi-how-you-doing-nothing-serious’ echo about the room in a round, and noticed they all did this weird placating gesture with their hands while they did it.

We sat down to a chat from one of the ‘power-sellers’, who told us how we could all be like him. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be. The arrogance ripped out of him as he gesticulated wildly, talking about chasing your dreams, smashing the glass ceiling, and other such vapid nonsense.

He presented an award to one sales team, who’d been up against another that week. The losers had to bow down before them in some sort of hazing ceremony, proffering gifts to their betters.

These firms pop up in offices across cities all across the world, and seem to have a strange, cult-like hold on their devotees, or employees. More and more people are having to take on jobs with them for want of anything else, in the current climate of austerity.