Sad news, I had a callout to on the weekend during which I found out the client’s mother passed away last May. She was a spry gal that liked to get out of the house. My client is an upper member in probably twenty major organizations. For example, what is that highest degree of Mason you can be without being like a doctor or judge? Thirty-second, or thereabouts. He is on church committees and knows tons of public figures I’d rate as pretty distinguished. He is a people person, thus his now six-year old computer system is in immaculate condition. I am the opposite, give me a computer and I can agree with it 95% of the time. He got into this PeopleString when it was new and asked for my review. I tend to regard all shopping clubs as MLM schemes. PeopleString is legitimate, but it still involves the recruitment of others and that most American of all brain-farts: that you save money by spending money.
They’ve negotiated discounts with many stores for a cashback arrangement, usually a few percent. (When it is 60%, call me then.) One also earns “peoplepoints” for establishing a “downstring”. The organization seems well-funded but that begs the question of why they are using such a worn-out business model. If you get $10 for every 100 peoplepoints, why don’t they just say 10 cents per sucker?
Success depends on how early you get in on the pyramid, and that may be the case here. The limiting factors are that you need working class converts to expand and it is just not true that each new person brings in ever more people. The upper limit appears to be around 140, a level very few people actually achieve often to the annoyance of their friends and family. Myself, I don’t know any working class people. At all.
He’s one of the few people I’ll talk politics with. He says inflation will get bad, I think it already has. A can of the cheapest soup, chicken noodle, costs three times what it did forty months ago. I’m old enough to remember when an extra large pizza with double everything cost $5.99. He predicts civil disobedience, I say the government got their ass scared off in the 1970s by all that and now have every last person on file so it can never happen again. Mind you, I view working under the table as a form of protest that anyone can do. Except Theresa and the work part.
Flashback time. I recall the first pizza joint I’d ever seen, Sir Art’s. Art was an impossibly old guy, at least 36. One day a customer ordered two extra large and got Art curious when he ordered only one milkshake. Art asked him how many people were arriving. He said it was just him but he was really hungry. Art challenged him if he could eat even one extra large himself, it was on the house, if not he had to pay for both. The customer said you’re on, and we watched. To his credit, he did get close to eating enough pizza for approximately six people.
But never bet with a pizza maker. They'll stuff the crust.
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