The Southwestern Company, a Scam?

Near the end of my most recent past school year, I decided that I wanted to find a summer job that wasn’t at home. Someone I know briefly mentioned something he was involved in called “The Southwestern Company,” and it sounded pretty good. I gave him a call on a Friday and attended an info session the following Monday. At the meeting, I found myself already in what they called “the selection process,” as I was asked to complete a number of assignments over the course of a few days. On Thursday I met with the person who referred me, and he told me he would like me to work with (for) them. Having been relieved of the task of completing assignments, I found some time to actually do a little research on The Southwestern Company. The next Wednesday I went to another meeting. After it was over, I told my contact that I was backing out, and that I hoped there were no hard feelings.

The Southwestern Company is a door-to-door sales company that sells educational books and software. Founded in 1855, it is the oldest door-to-door sales company in the United States, originally selling bibles. It is most (in)famous for its summer internship program for college students, purportedly – in their own words – to help them “offset their educational expenses.”

One of the first things I found in my research, simply by googling “The Southwestern Company,” was a site called Southwestern Company Truth. Certainly a curious find for anyone interested in learning more about the company and its program, the site contains roughly four dozen testimonies of horrible experiences with The Southwestern Company internship.

However, it is important to note that as much as the Southwestern Company Truth site definitely had an impact on me that pushed me in the direction of not doing the internship, I regarded it with skepticism, much in the same way I did with The Southwestern Company itself. It is a propaganda site, but a recent and modest counter to the extensive propaganda that The Southwestern Company has produced for decades. Ultimately, there is no way I can really verify the testimonies provided by either. I will argue however, that The Southwestern Company has an obvious vested interest in gathering and publishing testimonials. I have no way of testing it empirically, but I think we can reasonably posit that their testimonials should have an impact on their ability to recruit students for the program, which in turn has an impact on their ability to generate revenue. Southwestern Company Truth and its contributors on the other hand clearly do not stand to gain anything, except for maybe the catharsis of venting negative feelings.

The Southwestern Company collects and publishes hundreds of testimonials as part of its extensive propaganda. Nearly every day, if not literally every day, Trey Campbell posts a new testimonial on the testimonial section of the company website. No matter how many of them I read, something always seems wrong with them however: they always seem fake. Although I will not go as far as to claim that their testimonials are manufactured, they certainly look manufactured. They are often very superficial and most of them look very similar. They typically start out by thanking the company and sometimes their specific manager. Then they cursorily explain either what they learned on the job or how they grew as a person (sometimes both). Next they usually mention what their current occupation is, and credit their experience with the Southwestern Company internship for enabling them to acquire that position and perform its duties. They conclude by giving the company a glowing recommendation for prospective book salesmen. One of them literally says, “If you want to get the most out of your summers during college in regards to experience and life education, sell books! This is by far the best program for college students […]” And one direct quote that I find slightly humorous goes, “I’m amazed everyday at the many doors that my Southwestern experience has opened.”

This basic formula applies to the extended testimonials, written as letters, which The Southwestern Company gives as part of an information packet to prospective book salesmen at info sessions. They actually give you a stapled bundle of paper that is just a bunch of these extended letter testimonials, all printed with the logos of each person’s respective employer or business. My parents received another such bundle in the parent packet, but with different testimonials. By “extended” I mean about four or five paragraphs, a few hundred words total – as opposed to the shorter ones, which are one or two sentences long. The shorter testimonials on The Southwestern Company site and randomly distributed within other literature are similar, but usually cover one of those parts, usually the what-they-learned/how-they-grew. However, nearly all of the testimonials provided by The Southwestern Company have one thing in common: with only one exception that I could find, they go into almost no specific or personal detail about the actual experience itself.

This style of testimonial may be informed by the program’s experience of sales. These people are not simply giving testimonials; they are giving you a sales pitch on the program itself, and it reflects some kind of sales strategy. Hype up the positive, and pretend the negative doesn’t exist by omitting it. That way, you can’t be accused of lying. At worst you can be charged with having misspoken or not providing enough information. When omission doesn’t work, the strategy is to spin the negative into a positive by downplaying it and locating it as a small part of a much bigger, positive picture. This usually manifests itself in expressions such as “it was worth it,” or whenever the virtues of “sacrifice” are extolled. It’s a process of providing information selectively, specifically providing and emphasizing the information most likely to get you to buy while excluding as much as possible, and downplaying when exclusion is not possible, the information that would deter you. The pieces of information to provide in this case are the alleged benefits of completing the experience, while the pieces of information to omit or downplay are the details of the experience itself and the labor relations between students and The Southwestern Company.

Considering the relative uniformity of the testimonials and the fact that The Southwestern Company ultimately handles their distribution and publication, I wouldn’t be surprised if they give the writers guidelines on how to write them, i.e. what to say and what not to say. I think it’s certainly likely that they receive but do not publish some of the testimonials, specifically ones that may reveal too much about the actual experience. For the most part, The Southwestern Company has near-ultimate authority over which testimonies we get to see, and they have no need for negative or mixed ones. Until Kristen Spicer put up her Southwestern Company Truth site, there was simply no other outlet for them, and her site has been around for only two or three years, while The Southwestern Company has been around for over 150 and the internship over 140. However, her site is not an open forum either. Stories of ultimately positive experiences with The Southwestern Company will not be published on that site. Part of the reason this is so is that there is clearly no need for a new outlet for positive testimonies – The Southwestern Company practically necessitates one of their own by economic demand. But the purpose of the Southwestern Company Truth site is specifically to provide an outlet for those who had a negative experience.

Despite the small amount, the testimonies on Southwestern Company Truth cover a wide variety of perspectives. There are stories from students who did it and quit midway because the experience was miserable, students who completed it but regretted it, parents who hosted Southwestern students, parents of students who were in the program, and parents who were solicited to. Quite the opposite of the testimonials provided by The Southwestern Company, many of them are primarily, if not exclusively, about the details of what life was actually like on the bookfield. The parent stories are typically about encounters with students in the Southwestern program. They speak of miserable working conditions, sunk costs, guilt-tripping, cult-like phenomena, corporate irresponsibility, corporate incompetence, deliberate severance of communication, financial entrapment, public disturbance, encouraged law-breaking, bullying, misrepresentation, indebtedness (financial) to The Southwestern Company, poor customer service, worker misclassification, and more. In many cases the ultimate feelings are not just feelings of dissatisfaction with the company or the program, but intense anger and resentment. They view The Southwestern Company not just as a typical manifestation of the callousness of the corporate world, but as a company whose practices are immoral and which should be stopped.

I was disconcerted not so much by the intensity of the emotional responses of the testimonies on Southwestern Company Truth, but by the polarity of the controversy surrounding The Southwestern Company and its internship. Moderate, mixed opinions of it are surprisingly hard to find (they are mostly on blogs or message boards); extremely favorable and extremely unfavorable ones are not. On the one hand, there are people who speak as if the internship is a gift to college students that contains the secret of life, more valuable than any degree or any other internship or summer job – nearly, if not literally, all of them either currently or previously associated with The Southwestern Company. And on the other hand, there are people who speak as if the company is malicious, exploiting college students by preying on their naivety and aspirations in order to make money without assuming the risk itself – some of them previously associated with The Southwestern Company, some not.

This led me to the feeling that not only is there something wrong here, but that the reality of The Southwestern Company is very, very complicated. All the testimonies represent subjective experiences, and they have value in this function because an individual’s experience in the program is a subjective one. The one thing they all prove is that you could potentially have a great experience or a horrible one. It’s generally the more negative testimonies however that point in the direction and contain indicators of some of the program’s objective realities. The most fascinating questions they beg is precisely what the employment relations between students and The Southwestern Company are, what the human consequences are for these relations, and whether or not these relations are ethical based on those consequences. The controversy around The Southwestern Company begs many more questions to be sure, but these are probably the most important.

People have debated how up front The Southwestern Company is when it sells the internship to college students. In my brief experience interacting with company representatives and affiliated students, they were up front about some things but not others. The one thing that I would say they were truly up front about was that the job would be hard, very hard. Even as they told us that we could make money, they made a point of telling us that the money would not come easily. They were actually completely consistent and direct about getting across just how hard the job would be.

But there was no point in the info session when the company representative said anything along these lines, “In the interest of full disclosure, let’s talk about employment relations. You will be legally classified as independent contractor instead of an employee. This means we are not legally obligated to pay you a wage. It also means you’re not subject to labor laws about the length of the working day, so you can work well beyond eight hours a day, and we want you to work more than that. Since we don’t need to pay you a wage that naturally means we don’t need to pay you overtime, even though we want you to work overtime every day. We will not provide health benefits. By having you as independent contractors instead of an employee, we minimize our risk as a company by fielding it out to you. If you make a lot of sales, we make a nice profit; if you only make enough to cover your expenses, we still profit.”

“Since you are not an employee we are also not legally responsible for you at all should you get in trouble with the law – you’re on your own in this case. In fact, we are only concerned about this insofar as it means that the time you’re spending sitting in the back of a police car or in jail takes away from the time you could be spending knocking on doors, doing demos, and closing sales. We should mention that the legality of door-to-door sales varies by location. In some places it’s legal, in some places it’s not, and in some places it requires a permit. The permit is usually expensive, probably won’t even cover the entire schedule we expect you to work, and will be added to your expenses, though we will cover 50% of it at the end of the summer. Aside from that, the locals might simply call the police because a door-to-door salesman makes some people feel unsafe and uncomfortable no matter how big and shiny your smile is.”

“I know this is a lot of information to handle all at once, but it’s important that you know exactly what you’re getting into.”

Independent contractor. The most important thing to know about in regards to understanding precisely what you are getting into when you sign on with The Southwestern Company is the fact that you will be legally classified as an independent contractor. This should be one of the catchphrases in your mind, along with “schedule,” “demos,” “attitude,” and “the Law of Averages.” In an ideal world of full disclosure, they would start out by literally stating this phrase without any articles or prepositions just to make the idea stick. Then they would follow with an exhaustive explanation of absolutely everything that this means, particularly in comparison to the status of being an employee. The problem with this is that it would likely scare too many people away, so instead they downplay this part (or in my case, simply omitted it from the content of the info session), and play up the job as a test of individual achievement. They do tell you that you will be an independent contractor, but not up front. The closest they come to it in the info session is when they tell you, “you get to run your own business!” Instead, they tell you about it by making you sign a Dealer Agreement form, and you need to read it thoroughly and carefully in order to get this point. Even then, it’s hardly a comprehensive source of information, since it’s not supposed to be; it’s a legally binding agreement.

One of the principles behind being an independent contractor is that you work for another company, but you are not an actual part of that company. Being an independent contractor means having to pay not only for living expenses, but all work-related expenses. Independent contractors can deduct work-related expenses from their taxes, but also must pay their income taxes in full entirely themselves. By contrast, employers pay half of their employees’ income taxes. If a product is being sold, independent contractors buy the products from the company they are working for and then sell them. For employees, the product is not removed from company inventory unless, and until, it is sold to a customer. Employers are generally liable for the actions of their employees in the course of employment, with some exceptions. They are not generally liable for the actions of their independent contractors while they work, with some exceptions. By hiring people as independent contractors, employers can significantly reduce their expenses in many ways, including reducing their taxes and not providing health insurance of any kind. Employees are guaranteed worker’s compensation and are usually provided with other benefits. The Southwestern Company does a pretty good job of staying true to this principle of independent contracting.

Speaking specifically in terms of what this relationship means with The Southwestern Company, students are expected to pay for more or less everything that needs to be paid for during their “tenure” with the internship. At the start students need to put down at least several hundred dollars before they can start making anything. That’s for American students – European students traveling to the United States will need to spend at least a thousand, if not a few thousand. This may not seem like much to a typical adult, but the people recruited for the program are college students. Some of them may have no trouble with this – but many join the program because they do not have money and need to make it. From my research and interactions with company representatives and affiliated students, the only thing that appears to be definitely covered by the company is the five-day “Sales School” in Nashville – but they’re still making you spend a few hundred in travel expenses just to get there, for what basically seems to be rehearsing sales talk and watching/listening to motivational videos/speeches. In my case, this would have been a roundtrip plane ticket to Nashville – but not from my current state of residence. The plan was to drive to Washington State, my would-be sales site, from California, and get on a plane to Nashville from there. My contact told me that there would be a second trip to and from Nashville at the end of the summer.

Weirdly enough, it was difficult finding any consistency in the paperwork and literature I received regarding expenses and fees. The Parent/Guardian Support Letter that my parents received says that “Southwestern arranges discounted lodging during Sales School, and all necessary initial sales supplies and samples are provided free of charge.” The First-Year Dealer Agreement says “a sales case, and all necessary initial sales supplies and samples will be furnished to dealer at no charge. Dealers bears his/her own travel, food, and lodging expenses to attend.” My spring training manual reads, “A sales kit, book bag, credit card imprinter, and supplies, etc., are all provided by the Company at no charge to you.” The manual also says “the cost of the hotel will also be covered by SW […]” Meanwhile, the Letter of Endorsement, which came in the same envelope of materials that my parents received, says “you will receive a Southwestern account number, as well as samples of products, which will be charged to your account […]” A booklet, once again included in the envelope my parents received, says “Dealers purchase, at cost, a sales kit, sample case and necessary business management supplies, which they charge to their account with the company […]” My original contact with The Southwestern Company claimed that lodging and even food expenses would be covered during Sales School. My best solution to this problem was to assign primacy to legally binding documents over literature and individuals – but even then there was no consistency. Talk about shady.

The account mentioned here is an interest-free line of credit the company provides for the students to enable them to buy the books they sell to customers, since they know it is beyond the financial means of most students to buy the books up front. Obviously, the account is used for charges other than just the books, such as shipping and handling, and the aforementioned charges. Undelivered books can be refunded provided they are undamaged. In order to open this line of credit, students are required to get a Letter of Endorsement signed by two financially responsible adults, typically parents or guardians, who must agree to be responsible for up to $500 each, “in the event of default by Dealer after the close of a selling season.” In addition to student information, the Letter of Endorsement requires the endorsers’ home address, phone number, employer name, employer address, and endorsers’ social security numbers. This is done because The Southwestern Company knows that students may end up owing money but may not be able to repay it themselves.

Rather than try to hide the fact that a car would increase your expenses, they encourage you to bring one by explaining the benefits of doing so: increased productivity and being able to deduct it from your taxes. In reality, this ratchets your expenses up, primarily for the gas consumed, and secondarily for the possibility of a breakdown which is an expense that also is put entirely on you, but is tax deductible. One of the training manuals I received presented a little bit of fuzzy math that the average student probably doesn’t fully understand to convince you that a car is a good idea:

“Example: 10,000 miles driven
x .505 standard mileage rate
_______
$5,050 mileage deduction

$8,700 Gross Profit
- $5,050 Mileage Deduction
_______
$3,650 Gross before Expenses
- $2,500 tax deductible expenses
_______
$1,150 Taxable Income”

It’s questionable whether or not 10,000 miles is a realistic figure of the mileage you might put on your car in the program. Either way, there’s a problem here: driving more increases the amount you can deduct from mileage, but at the same time increases the amount needed to cover gas expenses. If 10,000 miles is a realistic figure for the summer, then gas expenses would be very significant. But being able to deduct this from your taxes doesn’t change the fact that your expenses have gone up; it just decreases how much else you have to pay, and the decrease is not proportional to the increase.

The thing is that regardless of taxes, this significantly increases your expenses while The Southwestern Company’s expenses do not change. They benefit from your potentially increased productivity by you being able to cover much more area in a shorter period of time, while putting the expense of this increased productivity all on you. For students, the only way they would truly benefit is if they experience such a boost in productivity that they make much more than enough money to cover this new expense. The possibility of surpassing gas expenses is somewhat within reason. However, in the case of a breakdown, this potentially adds thousands in expenses. There is always the logical possibility that even with a car an increase in productivity is not realized. In this case, The Southwestern Company simply does not suffer from the new expense, while you do. Realistically, the true benefits of having a car for students are the human ones: easing the physical stress of the job, having a place to put extra food and water, and having an air-conditioned space. One of the other benefits The Southwestern Company proposes for having a car is that “you can listen to advance sales and motivational CD’s during the day or on your way to and from work.”

It is obviously beyond the financial means of most students to bring enough money to cover expenses for the entire summer. It would seem an obvious enough solution that the money they make from sales would be used to finance living expenses. This means that they need to be making sales regularly enough so that they can keep up with expenses, since they typically occur with regularity. But setting that aside, students don’t actually give the product to customers on the day of a sale, and they don’t receive the full amount of the purchase. They ask customers for a deposit of half the amount, and then promise to deliver the product at the end of the summer – potentially months later. Even the money students receive from deposits isn’t entirely theirs to use for expenses. They have to remit most of the money to The Southwestern Company and keep only enough for basic subsistence. In order to live, Students have to spend money that they received from people who might ask for it back, and who have the right to get it back. For orders made by credit card, there is a service charge of usually about 3.5%, which is charged to students’ accounts.

Students are not provided with any kind of health benefits during the summer. The most they can expect out of The Southwestern Company in this area is an “accident policy” that needs to be purchased by the student for $45. It only covers “common accidents” such as a sprained ankle or a jammed finger. From the spring training manual, “It is only an ACCIDENT POLICY – illnesses are not covered.” There are different levels of employment commitment that usually determine how much a company will give in terms of health benefits. But if I’m going to be working 13-14 hours a day, six to seven days a week, outdoors, possibly with no access to air-conditioning, possibly in the sweltering heat, possibly in the rain, a thousand miles away from home, away from my doctor(s) – if I’m going to make a commitment of that extraordinary magnitude, I would expect a little more than an “accident policy” that I would need to purchase. But that’s one of the disadvantages of being an independent contractor.

One of the other main principles behind being an independent contractor is that you’re supposed to maintain a degree of independence not enjoyed by employees. Independent contractors traditionally set their own rules and methods of operation, including hours worked, both when and how many. This is why they are usually paid on a freelance basis instead of a wage or salary. Rather than working on a regular schedule like an employee, they work as and when required, as requested by the company they work for, but still at their discretion. Some companies do specify the contractor’s schedule as part of the contract; The Southwestern Company is not one of them. Generally speaking, The Southwestern Company somehow manages to eliminate the independence aspect of being an independent contractor for students and tries (apparently with much success) to control them as employees. (Or worse – the realities of this employment don’t quite fit the definitions of slave or indentured laborer, but employees cannot legally work the hours students are expected to work with The Southwestern Company.)

In the concrete, the first way that The Southwestern Company does this is through a combination of financial and physical entrapment. Students have to put down money before they can even attempt to start making money with the program, and beyond a certain point, students are financially trapped. The first point comes at Sales School, when money has already been spent on transportation and students are presumably responsible for lodging and food expenses as well. The second point comes when students actually reach the bookfield, at which point these same expenses increase further, and students have presumably purchased the sales supplies they need for the job. Once this money is spent, it is gone and cannot be gotten back – and this is all before students even have a chance to make any money.

The expenses aren’t too big for American students, but even those are inflated by having to first travel to the sales site, then to Sales School, and then back again to the sales site. It doesn’t make much sense why they can’t just go directly to Sales School and then to the sales site. American students start out the Southwestern Company internship with a deficit of several hundred, while European students at least a thousand, if not thousands. The only way to make it back is to not only stick with the program, but to make a certain amount of sales that will actually allow students to recoup their losses while paying for ongoing expenses. This is somewhat reasonable for American students, but much tougher for European students. Students who consider leaving early on face a dilemma: leave now and suffer a financial loss, or stick with it in order to make it back. For many students, especially European ones, suffering that financial loss by leaving is either not an option, or at best it is a very bad one.

Students are physically trapped by the program’s relocation. They seem to intentionally not only relocate students, but make sure that where ever students go, it is far away from where ever they are from. I currently reside in California and my would-be sales site was in Washington State and British Columbia. From watching videos on the company site, I noticed that people from Indiana and Iowa were stationed in Texas, and a girl from Washington State sold in New York. In truth, the physical entrapment works less in itself than as a means of intensifying financial entrapment. It would be much easier to leave the program if relocation were not a part of it. The farther you need to go, the more you will need to pay in travel expenses. Naturally this means that if you want to leave, the trip back home will be more expensive than if you weren’t so far – needless to say, if you choose to leave early, that will also be part of your expenses, and probably not tax deductible. European students need to apply and pay for Visas themselves, and pay much more in travel expenses. And we all know that no matter how far away your destination is, the plane ticket is always much more expensive when bought only days in advance. Still, students are a thousand miles, if not thousands of miles, away from home, family and friends, in a place that they are probably not at all familiar with.

This physical entrapment appears to also apply specifically during the working day, particularly for those students who don’t have cars, by deliberate severance of communication. Students in the Southwestern program are told to turn their phones off. My spring training manual says “Turn your cell phone off when you’re working (at least 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.), during Sales School and the summer. The answer always lies behind the next door, not the next phone call.” If everyone in a given sales crew does this, communication between them is more or less impossible during almost the entire day. For the students who do not have cars, they are basically trapped where ever they are, which can be many miles away from where they are residing, because the only people they know in the area will not pick up their phones. Even in the case of an emergency, minor or major, this prevents communication. Encouraging students to keep their phones off for that amount of time is unintelligent, unreasonable and dangerous.

In spite of this entrapment, the control that The Southwestern Company exerts over students is actually primarily psychological: the creation of an elaborate sales subculture that is a combination of Foucauldian discipline and Gramscian hegemony, and its inculcation and dissemination through training and propaganda (paper and electronic) respectively. This is one of the most brilliant aspects of the Southwestern phenomenon. It’s what allows The Southwestern Company to legally treat students as a type of worker with the disadvantages of both employees and independent contractors but with the advantages of neither. It allows them to claim that the students are free as independent contractors to work as they desire, and that they merely suggest working six days a week, 13 hours a day. Most importantly, it’s what allows them to get college students to consent to disproportionately unequal and unfair employment relations, which put almost all of the risk on the workers for the benefit of the company.

The reach of the culture The Southwestern Company creates is truly extensive. When you go to an info session or read Southwestern Company material, you get more promises, values and philosophy, than information or facts. At the info session I received a folder with various pieces of literature. It came with a bundle of testimonial letters which I described earlier. It also came with an assignment packet for the selection process. On the first page it says that having your Letter of Endorsement filled out quickly, the one that two endorsers need to provide their social security numbers for in order to open an account with a company, gives them a strong indication you want to work for them.

The second page is a website exercise. You have to go to the website, and find and write down the following information: when the Southwestern Company internship began, three organizations that The Southwestern Company is a member of, three of the company’s products, the content of specific testimonials, and three benefits of career services.

The next page is about what qualities you have that make you an asset “to the team.” It asks for five things that give you confidence, five things you want to gain from the from the program, how this would help you with your future plans, five questions you have about The Southwestern Company, and what you have to offer to The Southwestern Companyif you were selected for the program.

The next page asks you to call people from a list on the back page of students who have done the program and ask them questions. You are supposed to ask what the challenges were, what the benefits were, what was learned by living in a different part of the country, how their parents felt, what they did on Sunday, what they did for fun while working, what skills or success principles they feel they gained or improved on, and any suggestions on getting selected.

The next page has the final assignment, which is an “essay,” in which you have to answer why you should be selected, why you would do this instead of working at home, how you are going to convince your parents, what commitment means to you, and why you would be committed to finishing the summer.

On the same page as the essay questions, a very short story is printed titled “The Black Door,” which is about a general of “the Persian Army” who gave prisoners a choice between death by firing squad or walking through a black door to freedom. The prisoners chose the firing squad because they were not brave enough to take the black door. It breaks from the narrative into a philosophical diatribe about how most people are too afraid of the unknown to be anything other than mediocre. If you have never heard of the “The Black Door” before, that is because it does not exist outside of Southwestern Company literature.

And that was all just the assignment packet.

Even the folder I received was company literature. The front inside cover lists “The Top Ten Reasons Students Choose Southwestern.” The number one reason is that “Prior sales experience is not expected, nor required. Self-motivation, coachability, and initiative are the most important traits for success.” The back cover folds out to reveal testimonials, descriptions of the products, and a misleading graph titled “The Money – What’s Realistic?” that labels the Y-axis “Personal Profit” even though the figures shown are gross incomes. There’s a page in the folder for parent information, which answers questions about relocation, safety, start-up costs, and…what it takes to be successful.

Unsurprisingly, they also direct you to their company website, which is a vast, complicated array of pages, many of which even have their own domain names. The default home page provides basic information about what the company is, its history and its values. southwesterntestimonials.com is a blog exclusively for short written testimonials, and is separated into sections for students, alumni, parents and customers. southwesternsummer.com is the one that’s actually about the internship, and in addition to text, has five different three minute video testimonials. southwesterndifference.info is purely a propaganda blog to differentiate Southwestern from other direct-selling organizations and prove its legitimacy and reputation. The main page has various stories and blog posts about door-to-door scams and how Southwestern has helped students get through college. There is a link to a page about ethics, which claims that reputable companies abide by a strict code of ethics.

The Southwestern Company has even preemptively registered the domains southwesterncompanyscam.com, southwesterncompanycult.com and southwesterncompanysucks.com; to explain why The Southwestern Company is not a scam, why it is not a cult, and why it does not suck, respectively. In differentiating The Southwestern Company from other traveling sales crews, one of them says that traveling sales crews “often party late into the night and drug use is rampant.” Interestingly enough, these last three cannot be accessed by typing in their web addresses; they are only viewable as search engine results.

After I had been selected, I received a “training manual” and a “send off packet.” These were fairly similar and had a lot of overlapping pages. Both were haphazardly organized, with no rhyme or reason. The send off packet had a packing list, driving directions, and a schedule that planned out every minute of every day of Sales School. The training manual has product information, a training schedule, a daily schedule, a list of the awards you can win, among many other things. Both contained the entire sales pitch for The Volume Library.

Both the training manual and the send off packet have a 66-point checklist titled “Understanding The Summer” that needs to be signed by First-Year Dealers and Student Managers. It’s meant to be some sort of document that informs students of the realities and possibilities of a summer of selling books, and I think it may be legally binding. It starts out by saying, “the importance is to be aware of what could happen.” Some of the points are in line with this purpose, such as “You might have a few zero days during the summer.” and “Cars will break down.” But they also use this as yet another opportunity to instill you with company values and philosophy. There’s a point that lists all the reasons the program is worth it, and at least two others that are encouragements about the awards you can win. Some of the points are just direct statements about not only how to operate, but how to behave. One of them merely says “Sales School is energetic – especially the weeks where it is a large Sales School.”

My favorite piece of Southwestern Company propaganda was something called the “Redline Menu,” which was found on the inside of the back cover of the training manual I received, and is probably specific to the organization I would have worked with had I gone through with it. I would like to reproduce it in full, with every exclamation point, capital letter and grammatical error:

“REDLINE SUMMER MENU

*The Non-Champion*
Examples may include below average-average production
Symptoms may include ok start followed by poor middle and end of summer as energy and enthusiasm decrease…
Uncontrolled naps during demo’s and lazy attitude and effort
Examples of non-champion diet are:
BREAKFAST……coffee, soda or fake juice like sunny d
Pop tarts, doughnuts, or even eating nothing
Maybe followed by a smoke or two before the start time of the day
LUNCH/SNACKS…..quickie burger and fries, 7-11 hot dogs or nachos, candy bars, chips, etc…
DINNER…pizza with extra cheese & greasy meat, and a bowl of ice cream or twinkies right before bed!

*Mr. Normal*
This person is a typical settler. They’re not bad….just average. Symptoms may include very inconsistent production…. Quick flashes of potential, followed by regression. What we have here are people afraid to let themselves shine and/or reach their true potential.
Examples of Mr. Normal diet are:
BREAKFAST…sugar cereals, pancakes or waffles with whipped cream, bagels & cream cheese
LUNCH…. P.B.J’s with white bread like “Wonder”, lots of 25-cent granola bars all day long
DINNER…. Taco bell on the way home, hot pockets, pot pies, tv-dinners etc….

“EXCELLENCE”
SIMPLY “THE BEST OF THE BEST – THOSE THAT STAND ABOVE THE REST”

This person was born to shine! Their body is a temple and they expect perfection from it, so they give it perfection in return. Symptoms include incredible effort and belief to start the summer, followed by a natural week-by-week improvement and an amazing “I WON” finish. Usually results in the REDLINE VIP TRIP!!!

BREAKFAST….protein-based. Omelet or eggs with ham and vegetables like tomatoes, spinach, etc…whole wheat toast, hearty oatmeal with raisins or cranberries, fruit like oranges, bananas, or grapefruit. A little decaf coffee, if needed, is OK. Juice like Tropicana w/ extra pulp and calcium enriched. Protein shakes made @ H.Q. (with whey, soy or egg protein, & fruit) ALSO…vitamins are important!! Emer’gen-C is a great one!

LUNCH/SNACKS…all day long….tuna or turkey sandwiches with mustard (no mayo), PBJ with natural PB, whole grain bread, and whole fruit jam. Cold chicken breasts (keep a little cooler if you have a car) Non-melting protein/energy bars like outdoor balance bars, clif bars etc…big or baby carrots, almonds and nuts, turkey jerky and beef steak nuggets are great! Also raisins, dried fruit, trail mix w/ mostly nuts and fruit, and fruit leather. LOTS OF H2O!!!!!!!!

DINNER….low carbs, calories, and starch (as your about to get a championship sleep)
Chicken breasts are great with anything!! Also be creative with things like turkey wraps made with healthy tortillas and filled with low-fat cream cheese and vegetables (lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc…) Always enjoyed with my personal favorite… V-8 (chock full of nutrients)

As in life, only the few, the proud, the REDLINE will really have enough discipline and fight in them to stick closely to these standards of excellence. Some items on the EXCELLENCE list may cost a little more, but are a wise investment in your summer. Spending a few dollars to add thousands doesn’t suck! You can get most of it in bulk at places like Costco, Trader Joes, or Whole Foods.

Take it upon yourself to get the most out of your body this summer…and keep on rockin’ in the free world!”

My god. Who the hell writes this stuff? I’ll never forget the distinction they make between fake juices like Sunny D and juice like Tropicana with extra pulp. It’s incredibly gratuitous, from the “smoke or two” and “greasy meat,” to the final sentence. The use of the word “symptom” is also particularly interesting. While synonymous with “indication,” it carries negative connotations from its use in pathology, which associates it with diseases and disorders. This contributes to the overall negative tone of the description of the non-champion and Mr. Normal, and then its use simply feels out of place when describing EXCELLENCE. I’m sure much more could be written on the use of language in Southwestern Company propaganda by someone with linguistic expertise. Had I gone to sales school, I’m sure I would have received even more outrageous paper materials, and even audio materials. It’s a wonder why they can’t use the resources and money they invest in propaganda to just make a real commitment to students. It must be cheaper.

It’s all part of one huge sale. When it comes down to it, even under hypothetical conditions of remotely equitable employment relations, door-to-door sales is miserable, undesirable work. It is a low-level job, one that people who already have any kind of qualifications would never want. It is often incredibly thankless, and with very good reason: you are bothering people far more often than you are helping them. Yet The Southwestern Company somehow sells a horrible job under an even more horrible job arrangement. They do it by targeting a labor supply that is not only infinitely renewable, but gullible, impressionable and compliant. With the perfect target supply of labor, they make the biggest sale of all: that this job is more than what it is, that sales is more than sales, that the benefits are better than they really are, that you benefit more than they do, and that it’s not about employment relations – it’s about personal development.

One of the things you will hear most often in Southwestern Company literature, and especially from Southwestern Company defenders and apologists, is that this job “is not for everyone.” The unstated meaning of this phrase is that some people don’t have what it takes to handle this job. This partially serves as a disclaimer, but at the same time arouses an emotional desire in students to become the kind of person that this job is “for.” Since the statement itself is intentionally elliptical and creates more questions than it answers, it is usually followed by a more direct statement along the lines of “this job is for people who desire challenge and personal growth.” This is more part of the sale that The Southwestern Company makes than an actual requirement for the job. Much more than their books, The Southwestern Company markets a commodity in high demand among college students that they claim to have in ample supply and unparalleled quality: success. The exchange value for this success is measured in summers in the internship and students’ ability to do what The Southwestern Company tells them to do – or in their words, being “coachable.”

The Southwestern Company prides itself on not only giving students an opportunity to make money and fill out their resumes, but on teaching them how to be successful. They claim that they provide an opportunity for unmatched experience, life skills training, personal growth, and an opportunity to make a difference. The company motto is “We Build People.” The company’s purported mission statement is “To be the best organization in the world at helping young people develop the skills – and the character – they need to achieve their goals.” It’s a noble goal to be sure, but a company can claim to have noble goals and values, and it may not mean anything. Enron had similar values. The thing is, success, life skills and personal growth are nebulous concepts without static definitions; instead, they are defined by individuals and groups, and one personal definition of any of these does not necessarily invalidate others.

Regardless, The Southwestern Company claims it can teach students these things – but what they teach are their definitions, which are defined in terms of life as a book salesman with The Southwestern Company. From the spring training manual, “What do you think we mean by working hard? (30 demos, 75 hours, taking breaks at the same time each day, waking up early etc.)“ Students internalize certain success values, which may be good on their own, but they identify them with a job based on exploitative employment relations. The Southwestern Company can claim that its one focus is helping young people be successful, but this claim is highly suspect given that its entire business model revolves around extracting inordinate surplus labor from a workforce that makes a huge commitment to the company and assumes almost all of the risk, while the company itself makes minimal commitment and assumes almost no risk in return.

The day-to-day control of individuals works by building the social restraint of conformity in students through a system of disciplinary exercises and normalizing judgment. In the week that I was in the selection process and still on board for the job, my would-be student manager periodically prompted me to answer what the most important thing of my summer would be, and what the three things were that I could control. The answers were schedule, and hours, demos and attitude, respectively. In addition to working six days a week, students are required to attend a mandatory sales meeting on every Sunday (their “day off”), which is also added to their expenses (the cost of the venue) but is tax deductible. The training schedule in the spring training manual lists what topics will be covered at each meeting. In addition to procedural exercises that relate directly to the job, there are “Organizational Philosophies” and “How to Get What You Picture.” The training schedule also says to talk about the three things you can control in summer (hours, demos, attitude) and the lifeline of the summer (schedule) at every meeting.

There is an assignment that needs to be completed for every meeting. Some are memorization, and some are written assignments that can be found in the spring training manual.

The first written assignment is “YOU GET WHAT YOU PICTURE!” which asks you to write how much money you want to save, how much profit you make for unit sold, how many total units you need to sell to reach this goal, how many units you need to sell daily and weekly, and how many units you need to sell to pay for the Sizzler trip.

The second is “HOW TO REACH YOUR GOALS” which asks you to write the three things in the business you can control (hours, demos, attitude), what it takes to win specific awards, and what the “catch” is to this business.

The third is “MY PURPOSES” which has a prompt that says “I’m not going to sell books to sell books; I’m going to sell books to:” and then provides 30 lines for answers. At the bottom of the page is a quote by Calvin Coolidge on the value and virtue of persistence.

The final assignment is “GET TO KNOW YOU” which asks for basic personal information, personal goals, personal accomplishments, personal disappointments, the three most important things it takes to be successful in the Southwestern Company internship (varies depending on which piece of Southwestern Company literature you consult, but one of them is always “being coachable”) and more.

In some cases, the content or nature of the exercises has little to do with business or selling books. Many people have reported that songs and chants are a frequent part of Southwestern Company training, and the practice of taking cold showers is pretty well known. My contact with the company told me about something called “the old man dance,” a presumably ridiculous dance that had to be done at 3 PM everyday, no matter what he was doing and no matter where he was. The fact that this was done on schedule, but often alone and with no one watching, is a pretty good measure of the effectiveness of all of these exercises at building conformity. They have the double role of drilling in students the company’s desired behavior of them and of keeping them compliant.

The system defines behavior based on a positive pole (success) and a negative pole (bad attitude), which simplifies the process of assessing, judging, rewarding and, if necessary, disciplining/retraining students. Put simply, conformity to The Southwestern Company’s desired behaviors are judged as indicators of success, while deviations are regarded as indicators of a bad attitude. From the spring training manual, “the managers will always be doing some crazy things and may ask you to do them too. You don’t have to do them, but those that do always rise to the top!” The Southwestern Company’s grading system rewards much more than it punishes, but the non-reception of reward is punishment in itself in a system of rewarding. At the pinnacle of this system is a list of awards which are given for exceptional cases of conformity:

“* Gold Award & Gold Seal Gold Award – For working 75 or 80 hours every week of the summer
* Superstar Sample Case – For making 180 demonstrations a week for last seven weeks of summer.
* President’s Club – Hitting 600 units collecting $3,050 in a week twice during the summer.
* “I Wanna Win” – Recognition for a strong finish, having best week one of the last two weeks.
* Big Check Award – Receiving a check for more than $5,000 (or $10,000 in 3rd summer or later)
* Financial Management Award – For dealers who successfully guess their check within $25
* Top First Year Dealer – Top 100 first year performers.
* Sizzler Trip – A week-long trip in the fall to a tropical destination
* Mom’s Week & Dad’s Week – A chance to honor the special people in your life by having your best week of the summer.
* Other prizes are possible to win on a week-to-week basis”

“You may be a recipient of a “Blue Light Award” if the police stop to check your permit or if someone complains you’re too pushy.”

One of the most confusing things about this list is the fact that the Big Check Award is given for receiving a check of more than $5,000, yet Southwestern literature often states the average gross income of first-year dealers is roughly $8,000. If this is the case, this is an award that is given more often than not, and probably functions more as a punishment to the people who do not receive it. That, or the incomes in calculation contain figures over $20,000 that are offset by figures well below the average in order to come to that average. If we consider that scenario, $5,000 may actually be a fairly rare accomplishment. Interestingly enough, despite the company’s stated average of about $8,000 this may not be at all representative of what most students make on the job. My contact with The Southwestern Company made the top 100 first-year dealer list for the 2008 selling season. He was ranked 97th, and he grossed about $8,800 (and knowing him, probably made less than the company-stated profit for this figure). Interesting but unavailable relevant statistics would be the percentage of first-year dealers in The Southwestern Company’s workforce and first-year dealer retention rate.

There are even times when the company is just direct about giving students directions on how to behave, and this is when it seems most arbitrary. Without any explanation as to why, there is a passage in the spring training manual that reads, “Never work with another First Year dealer, unless recommended by a student manager. Never meet another First Year dealer for lunch.” The send off packet actually says “Always be positive, uplifting and encouraging. Never complain, discourage or be negative.” This is a pretty odd thing to say considering The Southwestern Company often claims that one of the eternal benefits of the job is learning how to communicate. This is not only discouraging open and honest communication, but it is bad mental health advice: trying to make problems go away by pretending they do not exist. When experiencing negative emotions and feeling the urge to complain, it is good mental health practice to discuss problems with other people, become conscious of your situation and how it may be affecting you positively or negatively, and then use that consciousness to effect positive change. But since the employment relations The Southwestern Company creates rely on an ignorant workforce, developing consciousness in students is something they do not want.

In spite of this, “communication” is another part of the sales pitch that The Southwestern Company makes, and it is related to how they market success. They claim that by interacting with thousands of families, you are learning how to communicate. This allegedly makes the job good for career-training, because you need to know how to communicate regardless of your chosen career path. The first thing to remember in this respect is that you are a door-to-door salesman. What you are really learning is sales, and specifically you are learning door-to-door sales, which is not even necessarily reflective of sales generally, especially in the current day. Door-to-door sales involves interacting with people, but the interactions are lopsided in the salesman’s favor: the main activity is for the dominant party to direct the interaction in the direction most likely to generate the desired response from the prospect (a sale) and to halt the interaction once that happens to reduce the likelihood of a reversal.

At its most lucrative, door-to-door sales is about manipulating human psychology to one’s advantage. I won’t claim that this isn’t a useful skill; on the contrary, it can be extremely useful. But it is not necessarily communication. Communication is the expression and exchange of ideas, opinions and thoughts between parties for the sake of informing and understanding. It involves at least as much listening as talking. Instead of listening and understanding people's actual needs, door-to-door sales is about convincing prospects that they need the product regardless of whether or not they actually do. The definition of communication, as with many words, is debatable and variable to some extent, but the word is used for the positive connotations that this particular definition carries.

Another way that The Southwestern Company successfully compels students to work so many hours is by convincing them that by increasing the sheer volume of prospects, “the Law of Averages” will work in their favor. This is one of the most pervasive catchwords in Southwestern Company literature. At the info session, the company representative said “believe in the Law of Averages, and you will do fine.” It’s mentioned at least a few times in the spring training manual. “No matter what – let the Law of Averages work for you.” “If you discipline yourself to show your books 30 times a day, the Law of Averages will work for you.” “[…] you’re in control through the Law of Averages.”

The Law of Averages is not a law of any kind. It is merely a lay expression of wishful thinking. Some people may believe in it, but it is no more law than the expression “good things come to those who wait.” Calling it a law falsely lends it legitimacy, of which it actually has none, scientific, statistical, or otherwise. Even if it were a real statistical law, the outcome of a sales pitch is not a set probabilistic occurrence. The outcome may be expressed in binary terms (sale or no sale), but what determines that outcome is a multitude of factors that are mostly arbitrary and different for every case. It is determined by predictable factors such as family income and overall economic climate, but also factors like first impression, which itself can separated into looks, race, height, or tone of voice. That the Law of Averages is used quite seriously as a sales pitch for the job in Southwestern Company literature reinforces the exaggerated, mythological nature of Southwestern Company propaganda, which reinforces the overall suspiciousness of the company and the internship.

So is it a scam? The potential to benefit is real. You can make money, and it will look good on your resume, at least in the sense of having something on your resume. Unless you’re an outstanding salesmen however, the money probably won’t be that great given the time you put into it and the expenses, and the company benefits way more than you do in this area with much less risk. Having something on your resume is better than nothing, especially if you commit to that something for an extended period of time. But I am unconvinced that the Southwestern Company internship looks better on a resume than any other job or internship, especially ones in a relevant field of interest, or that it appears at all exceptional. Deb McCroskey, one of the most frequently mentioned Southwestern Alumni, claimed that her experience with The Southwestern Company gave her an advantage over other med school applicants whose resumes read “worked in a hospital” just because it made her look different. Are you shitting me? No sale.

Door-to-door sales is currently a very rare and outdated business practice – probably because it’s expensive, highly inefficient, and can have emotional consequences for the salesman. Particularly if you were interested in a career in business, it boggles the mind how the the Southwestern company internship could even be as good as, let alone at all better than, a real business internship or job where you would actually be exposed to modern business practices. All in all, while the potential to benefit is real, not only are there other programs, internships and jobs that also have real potential benefit, but they are probably better, saner, and more humane.

One of the common themes in the testimonials provided by The Southwestern Company was that the students believed that the experience prepared them for the professional world. However, it’s difficult to find any agreement with this statement from the employer’s point of view. Employer testimonies on Southwestern alumni largely do not exist, or they are simply not generally accessible because there is no real outlet for them. The only one I could find was on an Internet message board, and it was not favorable:

“But, that said, one of my employees years ago, early 1980's worked there for 3 summers as a college student and he felt he was thoroughly trained in sales.

To be honest, he only had discipline from the experience but he was totally wet behind the ears and needed to be trained and retrained for a professional setting.

It was NOT a resume builder to me.”

What we have here is simply a case of bad employment relations, which in itself is not particularly exceptional. Many, many companies have done it over the past few hundred years, and many still do it today. However, The Southwestern Company has an interesting, unique business model that allows it to persist with these employment relations into the modern day and in the United States, where employment relations have fairly steadily improved during the country’s history. The model’s purpose is to act as a safeguard, shielding the company from risk and litigation while staying lucrative, and it has its own absurdities and ingenuities. On the one hand, Southwestern students bother hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who do not want to buy, yet people who are actually interested in their products have no way of buying them unless students happen to be dealing in their area. On the other hand, one of the diabolically brilliant aspects of the employment relations The Southwestern Company sets up is that if any group decided to take some sort of stand against the company, a boycott would be completely out of the question because it would immediately and severely ruin the lives of student salesmen long before having a significant effect on the company itself.

One of the biggest questions that I want an answer to is what the ratio is of students who had good experiences to students who had bad experiences. Unfortunately, any statistic on this is unlikely to be at all accurate. My contact with the company discounted the Southwestern Company Truth site as the unique stories of a few disgruntled people, and that thousands of people have done the program and were satisfied with it. The booklet that came with the parent packet actually says “approximately 3 out of 10 do not finish the program.” So we can tentatively say that at least 30% probably had bad experiences, unless a significant portion of those people had to stop for other extenuating circumstances. At the same time, testimonies also prove that not all of the people who completed a summer, or even multiple summers, had good experiences. Given that I’ve established The Southwestern Company’s probable interest in gathering testimonials, it is far more likely that bad experiences go unreported. Southwestern Company Truth provides an outlet, but I doubt it actively pursues students who did the program, partially because it probably doesn’t have the resources. (The Southwestern Company should have records of students who have done or attempted the program.) It also most likely doesn’t engage in much, if any, marketing.

If you learn enough about The Southwestern Company, whether through firsthand experience or by reading about it, it’s hard not to take sides. It inspires divisiveness on the level of those inspired by religious differences worldwide. Funnily enough, the differences of opinion on The Southwestern Company do appear to reflect a dramatic disagreement of opposing philosophies. Whenever The Southwestern Company comes up on some kind of message board or someone’s blog, the people in defense of the company usually make a point of claiming that if you have issues with the company or had a bad experience with the program, it is somehow your fault. One such person even said that the people who complain are just weak. They usually make no mention, not even in defense, of the employment relations between students and The Southwestern Company, as if nothing is wrong them. Without exception, these people are currently or previously associated with the company. Whether they realize it or not, most of them clearly hold a social Darwinist perspective on life – in which the strong not only survive, but prey on and exploit the weak because that’s the only purpose the weak can, and should, serve.

If I subscribed to this kind of philosophy, I could imagine how the employment relations The Southwestern Company arranged would be acceptable. But I don’t. It’s difficult for me just to put myself in that perspective because it is so far from what I believe in, what I believe is right and moral. In contrast to social Darwinism, the testimonies and complaints made by the people who are against the company often reflect deeply held ethical humanitarian ideals. I can’t claim that life is fair. But I can claim that acknowledging the unpredictability and inequality of circumstance does not justify its exacerbation through human agency. If it does, then the saying that life isn’t fair is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, quite possibly the saddest one imaginable. In a social context, humans have the power to make choices, and the actions they take based on these choices have consequences that affect other humans, for which they are responsible.

In the end, ironically the selection process actually selected me out, even though I had been technically selected to do the program. The assignments I was required to complete asked me questions about not only what qualities I have that would allow me to succeed, but also how I work, what I believe in, and what is important to me. Sometimes these were repeated in some form, and I repeatedly found myself saying that I am analytical, that I pay attention to detail, that I try to examine every aspect of a given situation in order to determine the best solutions, that I try to weigh consequences based on what I’ve gathered, and particularly that I am sensitive to the needs and desires of people. This led me to search for more information on The Southwestern Company, particularly information not authored and given to me by The Southwestern Company. It propelled me to further examine their business model and employment relations, and question how ethical they were. It even led me to question the morality of door-to-door selling. I am just an uninvolved observer, but I do not like what I see, and I would not want to let anyone I cared about get involved with this company.

related links:

Southwestern Company Website
Southwestern Company Truth
The Southwestern Company on Wikipedia
Personal Development for Smart People Forums - Southwestern Company, a scam?
scam.com - Southwestern Company a scam?
Cult Education Forum - The Southwestern Company
The white wall of Babylon - Living the Life of a Salesman
The white wall of Babylon - Never Quit
The Southwestern Company on Vimeo
About.com - Your Rights as an Independent Contractor
USA Today - College students learn from job of hard knocks
The Good 5 Cent Cigar - Southwestern offers unique opportunity for students
The Guardian - First at the door
Manage Smarter - School was never like this
NBC - Governor Doyle Signs Malinda's Act
Birmingham Guild of Students - Guild Council Motion: Southwestern on our Campus
Durham Students' Union - Southwestern Books
The Bandera Bulletin - An out-of-towner has come a-knockin'
southwesterncompanyscam.com
southwesterncompanycult.com
southwesterncompanysucks.com
Traveling Sales Crews - southwestern company
The WynnBlog - The Southwestern Experience
Young Money - Summer Sales Jobs: "You Get What You Put Into It"
BLoodRedRosez' Xanga - I'm so glad I'm a naturally cynical person...