It's not often that I have someone backstab me. For reals. Generally, people are really nice to me. Maybe that's because I hide my anger issues really well and always put on a happy cheerful frickin' face for all. But you guys know differently. And someone this last week tried to pull a number over on me, and got CAUGHT at it! Here's the deal:

You all know that I peddle Pampered Chef. I love selling this stuff. I'm not doing it for the money, although that's a nice little perk. I do it for the free stuff I get, and put the commission checks in a little bank account for "fun".

But now I want to welcome you to the sometimes sordid world of direct sales.

Years ago, I used to sell Pampered Chef. Our "cluster" was quite large and my director was very successful. She was wonderful at assisting us and giving us helpful tips and pointers on things to do to book shows and get our sales higher. Then I quit selling the stuff because I was pregnant with Ashton and working extremely long hours at my full time job. Shortly after I quit, my director began experiencing "home troubles" and left Pampered Chef. Got that?

Let's fast forward to this year. My former director started working at my place of employment. I was happy to see her, as it had been years since I'd last talked to her. She was pleased to find out that I had begun selling Pampered Chef again, and started pestering me to do a show for her. I asked her if she was going to re-sign up and she said no, she just wanted to do a show for me since she had some people that were wanting some stuff. Cool! Great! I gave her some catalogs and order forms and she told me that she would have the 'show' ready to turn in at the end of the month.

So with one week left in the month, I started calling her. "Hey! It's Norman! Just checking on you to see if you need any help with your show! Give me a call" That was my first message. The other 16 were pretty much the same thing. The bottom line here was she would not call me back. Generally, after 17 calls, I can take a hint and figure that she never really wanted to do a show after all, even though she VOLUNTEERED to do this.

Then on the 28th of February, she called me. "Norman, I can't do this. Would you come pick up this show and turn it in for me?" I sat there for a minute, confused "er...Ok. What do you mean "you can't do this"?" I asked. "Well, see - it's like this" she replied, "I don't have time to enter the orders and send it in because my consultant number is expired and I don't have time to get a new disk to upload the program and well....*sigh*, I just don't have time, so I'm going to let you send it in."

WHAT??!! Ok. For those of you who aren't in to direct sales or anything, this BEEYOTCH was attempting to steal my show! Now, normally, since this was a catalog show and technically - she WAS the one who did all the work, I wouldn't get upset about this. BUT SHE HAD TOLD ME SHE WAS GOING TO GIVE IT TO ME. She was my former director so she knew exactly what she was doing. She used MY SUPPLIES and my name to make these sales, and then attempted to turn them in herself. This pissed me right off. Not only that, but she had told me that SHE was going to be the hostess. Then when she concocted this scheme to thief the show from me, she decided to ask someone ELSE to do the show. But this person was already signed up to do a show for someone else that does Pampered Chef. So she swiped this person from yet another consultant and ran the show under that name. So let's review:

1. Told me she was going to do a show for me
2. Swiped another hostess from a different consultant
3. Gathered payments MADE OUT TO HER and used MY SUPPLIES
4. Chickened out when I began calling her asking the status of this show
5. Tried to turn it around as if I knew about this the whole time
6. Turned show over to me all the while acting as if this were the plan the whole time

I asked the new "hostess" the name of the consultant my old director swiped her from. (I was going to give the show to them) She said she didn't remember their name but that they never followed up on the show for her, so she was perfectly willing to turn it over to me.

So I'm vindicated on submitting this show under my name.

But the topper was when my former friend advised me that I should buy her a stoneware muffin pan as a "thank you" for doing a show for me. And she was quite serious.

Yeah right. I think she needs to hold her breath and wait for it.