Jane's Amway/Quixtar Story

In 1989 my husband, Steve, owned an electrical-supply business and worked construction on the side. I was a full-time mother who also provided foster care to some of our county's neediest children. Steve was initially shown the business by one of his customers; I never really saw the plan but knew what it was about because my father had been a distributor for a couple years in the 70's. By the time I found out, our joining was pretty much a fait acompli, but I "came around" early on. For someone like me who longed to own nice things, have a huge home to live in, travel and raise our children to love God and our country, the business seemed tailor-made for us. And for the first six or so years, I followed along without question.

The Quixtar (Amway) business preaches traditional values, but the longer we were part of it, the more confused I became. First of all, I didn't understand why a company that supposedly put family first insisted on us spending so much time away from our children. Many of the people in WorldWide were like my husband and me- struggling to make ends meet and working jobs that left little free time. We were discouraged by our upline from taking our children with us to distance functions like Family Reunions, even though this was the only vacation we could afford because of all the money we were spending on the business. And I remember being asked to attend Sunday "Leaderships" on rally weekends- even on national 3-day holidays, and Mother's and Father's Day. Try explaining to your in-laws why you must ask them to stay with their grandchildren for yet another late night when you're trying to entice them into joining your business and how WorldWide honestly puts family first. You can't!

We were told to banish anything "negative" out of our lives. This included magazines, newspapers, television cable service, radio stations, etc. We were expected to listen to upline tapes every chance we got- making dinner, in the car, even in the bathroom. Well, when you have small children, that's a big order. My kids would become restless running errands or going places because instead of soothing music or a children's cd, they'd have to listen to one of Mommy's boring upline tapes, and they would get fidgety. They reacted in frustration when Steve banned television programs, even news and science programs they were supposed to watch for school assignments. Without the radio, a newspaper or tv, I rarely knew what was going on in the world; in fact, it was only through a telephone call from my mother-in-law that I learned of September 11th, and I hastily jimmied a temporary antenna so we could watch news updates. ("Luckily", Steve was out of town for the first several of those terrible days and couldn't complain about my so-called negativity.)

Negative also became, in Steve's line of reasoning, any emotion that wasn't shiny-happy, full-on enthusiastic, or instantly giving into his commands. This is not necessarily Quixtar's fault, but WorldWide insisted in complete allegiance to their way of doing things, and that included complete submission of wife to husband. Not only was it supposedly wrong for me to question why Steve had to spend every evening away from the family showing the plan (even though we weren't growing in our business) and many weekends at functions, but it became "wrong" for me to question anything in our marriage, including his demanding behavior. I tried to be a docile little Amway wife, but I drew the line when he started blaming me for people not signing up under us (by claiming my "negativity" was keeping him from showing the plan when, actually, he wasn't following all the steps). WorldWide crowed about their low divorce rate, but when big-time Diamond marriages, like Frank and Sheilagh Radford, Howie and Ann Danzik, and Jim and Betty Jean Brooks, crumbled- all noteworthy, not only in the amount of money involved but the decidedly spectacular way they ended- it made me wonder who we were following. Our married lives were filled with the so-called Amway Discussions. The more he followed the dictates of WorldWide, the less involved he was with the family and less available to me emotionally. A year after we quit the business, our marriage fell apart.

During the twelve years we were involved in WorldWide, our upline rarely changed pins, despite open evidence that they were religiously following the 2-5 year plan. Our sponsors, I think, were at 6000 PV by the time we quit. 6000 PV after 14 years! (They'd joined WorldWide in 1987.) Our directs were direct when we joined and weren't even Ruby when we quit. Our emeralds went in and out of qualification, and our Executive Diamonds (Theron and Darlene Nelsen) were always a few directs shy of Double. Our sponsors moved from California to Idaho about five years after we got into the business, and it became too costly for them to come down and help us. Every time Steve asked our direct what to do (because our business wasn't growing), he'd say, "Just keep doing what you're doing." Wonderful advice, huh! And just like thousands of distributors we went nowhere fast.

But if I had to put my finger on a major sticking point about our 11 years in Amway, I'd have to say it was the thousands of dollars we invested in the business that was just like flushing money down the toilet. We bought products we didn't need in order to fulfill pin quotas- some of them way over-priced in order to carry the Amway name. And there were Standing Order tapes every week, stocking our tape library with earlier tapes that came out before we joined, buying motivational books, and attending monthly seminars and rallies and and expensive long-distance functions. I estimate that we lost at least $35,000 chasing a worthless dream. This was money we could've used to pay bills, clothe our children, repair our home, buy a new automobile, etc. But with the system teaching us that it was necessary to spend this money in order to get rich, noble to delay gratification and wrong to question or complain, I put aside my qualms, and we obeyed like dumb sheep. For twelve years we kept following orders until we were broke, miserable and complete strangers to each other.

To anyone thinking of joining Quixtar, especially under the WorldWide system- DON'T!

Jane Cavender