A Mechanic and his Tools anonymous

Gullible Gary earned a decent living as a (name your current profession here), but over the years he allowed his cost of living to creep up to the point where it met and occasionally exceeded his ability to meet it. Simultaneously, he found that the job in which he had invested too much of his personal sense of self-worth in was providing him with less and less personal satisfaction as the years went by. Life was looking somewhat bleak for Gullible Gary until he met Marv the Mysterious Mechanic. Marv told Gary that he had found a vocation in life that awarded him not only tremendous personal satisfaction but also had potential to earn him a virtually unlimited income. Gary listened carefully as Marv laid out his plan for success. Marv stressed to Gary that the key to Gary's success was to become a "mechanic" in his spare time and recruit as many other people as he could to do the same. Gary found this plan somewhat puzzling and expressed his primary concern, which was that he had no previous experience being a mechanic. Marv assured Gary that there was absolutely no experience or even skill required for Gary to earn unlimited potential as a mechanic as long as he had friends, and his friends had friends, who were open to new and different ways of making money.

Although Gary still did not understand Marv's vague explanation of how his mechanic business worked, he was nonetheless thrilled with the idea of earning a potentially unlimited income doing something which he was assured would bring him and his friends great personal satisfaction. Assured he would better understand the business after he was in it, he signed up. Prior to this, Marv and Gary had not discussed the expenses associated with running a mechanic business. Marv signed Gary up for a weekly standing order delivery of "tools". When Gary questioned this, Marv explained "Every mechanic needs tools. How can you operate a mechanic business without them? Don't worry, you're investing in yourself. What better investment can you make? Besides, your tool expenses will eventually be a drop in the bucket compared to the potentially unlimited income you can make in this business." Reassured by Marv's words, Gary forked over the money to pay for the standing-order tools.

As the months went on, Gary maintained a positive outlook, but began to be troubled by nagging little doubts. He had amassed a huge collection of tools, but had yet to put them to any significant use. And despite the fact that it had been repeatedly stressed to him that each individual tool was a vital key to his success, without which he could never hope to succeed, Gary could not distinguish how any one tool in his collection performed a significantly different function from all the other tools. Gary wondered if his tool collection would ever be complete enough that he would not need to be on standing order. To make matters worse, Gary's wife was becoming increasingly upset with him because the cost of these tools was double and frequently triple or more what Gary was earning in the mechanic business. When he expressed these concerns to Marv, Marv gave him more vague reassurance that he had made the right choice in changing occupations, but possibly not in choosing his spouse. She obviously was not interested in his personal success and satisfaction. In any case, when several of Gary's recruits began canceling their standing order tool shipments, Marv refused to give them any more support in building their mechanic businesses. Gary knew he could never hope to aspire to Marv's level of success in this business without Marv's continued support, so he questioned the value of the tools no further.

Gary eventually refinanced his house and cashed in his 401k account to maintain the expense of his standing order of tools, but the income from his mechanic business never caught up with his outgoing tools expense because he was losing recruits as quickly as he could find them. Eventually he went online looking for recruits and came across websites owned by former mechanics who had quit the business after discovering that guys like Marv weren't actually earning the lavish incomes they claimed by being mechanics, but were actually making most of their money selling tools to other mechanics! When Gary confronted Marv about this, Marv did not deny that he earned a bonus from the tools he sold. Marv would not be specific about how much he made selling tools in comparison to what he made from actually being a mechanic; Marv told Gary that the "tools bonus" was just a little incentive the tool manufacturer paid him to offset his expenses maintaining such a large business. When Gary suggested this might resemble a conflict of interest, Marv replied, "What's the problem? We're doing you and your recruits a favor selling you tools which will be an invaluable asset to you the rest of your life. The beauty of this whole thing is that you can get paid to help people and make a positive difference in their life. We don't tell newer recruits about the tools bonus because they wouldn't understand, but since you're only a few recruits away from reaching the kind of success I've enjoyed, I can now share this little secret with you. And now you can look forward to the day when you can participate in the tools bonus in addition to the money you'll be making from your mechanic business."

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Gary's wife left him, taking the income from her J.O.B. with her. With no money left for tools, no room left on his credit cards, and no equity left in his home or retirement plan, Gary filed for bankruptcy. And just like he did to Gary's recruits, Marv became increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to reach after Gary could no longer pay for the tools. Gary initially blamed his own fears and doubts for his tragic failure, but with Marv and his upline no longer around to pressure him, Gary was eventually came to the realization that the "business opportunity" Marv had presented him with was not a real business at all, but simply an elaborate front for people like Marv to sell their tools to people like Gary and his former friends. Gary eventually unloaded his tools for five cents on the dollar and spent the next few years of his life putting the ordeal behind him.

………..

The purpose of this story is to illustrate how ridiculous it is for ScAmway high-pins to even call their tapes, books, rally tickets, etc., "tools", let alone dare to compare them to the tools of a legitimate trade or the expenses of a legitimate business! In my opinion, the AMO tools system is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who's ever invested anything in a legitimate vocation, and as long as it is practiced in its current manner, the high-pins who promote it deserve to be vilified as the swindlers they are.

-A former mechanic, and former "mechanic"

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