If you think your job is bad, check out the hell on earth tha is door-to-door magazine sales. We guarantee you'll go in early and stay late for the rest of the week.
Have any of the kids pictured above showed up at your door hawking Allure magazine subscriptions for disabled kids or high school basketball teams? They were probably not telling the whole truth. According to this brilliantly reported, epic article in the Houston Press, working as a traveling magazine subscription salesperson is like a lot more exploitation and vice than wholesome summer job.
The gruesome gist:
In the eight months the Press investigated door-to-door magazine sales across the country, the industry has seen at least three murders, one rape, two attempted rapes, one stabbing, one attempted murder, one vehicle fatality and one attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl.
This article describes a world crazier than fiction. There's endless crime, drug use, deception, death and naked men. No one who hires, manages, or employs the young people working in door-to-door magazine sales seems to care about anything but the bottom line (read: $$) and, complicating matters even more, nobody driving the salespeople across the country has a valid driver's license.
Makes sitting at a computer in our underwear all day a bit more appealing. Who are we kidding, we LOVE working in our underwear. May we suggest blogger as a safer and much comfier career alternative for anyone seeking employment in magazine sales. Sure the drugs probably aren't as good, but you probably won't be driven off a cliff by your psycho boss. Probably.