When Did You Start Coming Out of the Pink Fog?
Written by L J on August 25, 2008 – 9:58 am -There was talk on our forum lately about a particular incident or event that jolted people out of their “pink fog” acceptance of the things in Mary Kay.
Do you remember the thing that started your examination of things rather than just taking the word of your director or the company?
I’d like to hear about it.
Tags: Mary Kay, mk, pink fog
Posted in Articles & Commentary |
Colleen on 
Tam on 
Sassy_C on
August 25th, 2008 at 10:13 am
My “aha” moment came when I stumbled upon another anti-MK web site in June of 2007 and saw that MK was planning extensive changes to their color line, as well as changing their compacts. The date this information had been posted was Jan. 2007, 6 months prior to my visit.
I called my SD and asked her point blank about the changes, and told her where I got the info. She assured me that she knew nothing about it! She also said, stay away from those negative sites and people, they spread lies about MK. If you want to know the truth ask me or call MKC Consultant Relations.
4 weeks later she called me from Seminar and told me that they were making those changes, plus more changes!
I knew right then that I had been lied to! Not only that but the extensive changes were going to cost me a lot of money in stocking new product and I still had a lot of the soon to be obsolete product on my shelves,
I kept reading and decided to send my product back in August.
There are all kinds of reasons your SD will not let you know about changes ahead of time, but the #1 reason is she wants you to continue to order so she can make production. If you knew there were changes coming up in the next month or so you would wait to order the new products and she wants you to order NOW and LATER too.
That’s just one of the deceptive practices that SD’s NSD’s and MKC practice. When you remove your pink glasses and step outside that pink bubble, you will be amazed at what you can see.
Better yet, stop attending your unit meetings for a few weeks! Come and read the info on this site and the “veil” will be lifted.
The Truth will set you free!
August 25th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
lipstick - reading your post makes me think again how that is so opposite of my mk unit. our director told us immediately to stop ordering and we would just trade amongst ourselves to help get the soon-to-be-discontinued products sold. she never mentions production (and she’s a caddy driver), never has contests to order, and never does recruiting drives. we might add one or two unit members per month and those gals come in with a $200, on average. we literally have about 175 gals in our unit (the director has been a director for about 20 years), and probably half order $200 per month (cuz they are part-time selling) and then there are a few fireballs that order more, but they are selling the product. just trying to convey that there are probably more units than you would think doing things the right way, without pressure and gimmicks. thanks for letting me post.
August 25th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
lisa, I’m sure there are units and SD’s that operate ethically. I’m just saying that’s what happened in our unit. I can remember many times if I passed along an email from another IBC who got information from her NSD on upcoming changes and products, my SD would get upset and say, “they were taught by MKC not to share information too soon as consultants would wait to order the new product and the SD would lose orders for the current month”
I know she could not have been the only one doing this. I applaud anyone who has worked their business with integrity as your SD apparently has, but I believe it is the exception, not the rule.
You will find way more former MKers who have had the bad experiences than those who have had a unit such as yours. Again I applaud your SD for working with integrity!
I applaud you for working your business smart and with integrity. I believe that is what MK had in mind when she started MK 45 years ago, but sadly some people have $$ signs and greed rules
the way they operate their business and run their units.
I respect your right to post your experiences!
August 25th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
My “moment” was stretched over several months. Since inventory wasn’t mentioned until AFTER I signed and then as “REQUIRED $600″ (which of course, is NOT true) I was ‘encouraged’ to get to a full store level. After quaterly SD contest ‘winnings’ were NOT presented and when asked, “we’re working on it” was the answer; and with the cc piling up; then the monthly ’sales’ challenges started coming to sell $2000 and reinvest $1200, to help the team!
August 26th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
My “moment” was really a moment at all. It was right after Career Conference this year and I was trying to find a part time job because Mary Kay wasn’t paying the bills anymore. My SD was very close to me at the time and I told her that I was going to have put MK in the back seat for a few weeks until I got a new job and my bills caught up. She said that was fine and she understood completely. Well apparently that understanding went out the window because a week later she started talking to me about signing up for seminar and how I MUST go. I very nicely explained that right now it wasn’t an option because I had yet to find a job. Well a few weeks later, she calls me up telling me about how I MUST go to seminar. I told her that I just couldn’t because I still didn’t have a job. A week later she calls me up and tells me go ahead and register ($175) and if worse comes to worse, I can always back out of it and receive most of the money back. That was the last straw for me. I told her I couldn’t do that because as it was, I only had a little money left ($300) in savings and I needed to pay bills with that. I think she finally took the hint from that because she stopped calling me up telling me I had to go to seminar. Instead I got emails…lol
August 29th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I really don’t know when my moment came because I was only in this about 3-4 months. I had doubts right from the start, but my hubby was so supportive and encouraging. He really thought that I would be able to quickly replace the $1800 that I took out of savings to get my initial inventory. This is what my SD told us, anyway…that it would only take me a few months to earn it all back. After I calmed down from the initial shock, I kept hearing my SD talking about all the family time that she had to spend with her grandchildren, but then I’d see that she would have a party and her husband would have to keep the grandchildren. She talked about putting God first, but was not going to her church on Wednesday nights in order to do a party. Then the cheesy “prizes” and her “encouraging” me to go to Seminar and all the fun that they always had. These were some red flags for me. Then I heard how obnoxiously stupid I was sounding when I tried to get first my friends and then total strangers to book parties. The final straw was when I started researching the ingredients in the new and “wonderful” mineral make up and found that it contained talc. I’m not sure what made me research talc and the dangers further, but I just did. That was the final straw for me. I also literally stumbled onto this site and started reading the stories and the blogs on here and realized that my gut instinct was right from the start. I had my friend come by and purchase $400 worth of product (at cost) with a warning about the bare mineral make up containing talc (she purchased one of the last 2 of those that I had despite the warning). She got her stuff this week. This weekend I will be packing up the rest and sending it all back…at last! Thank you, pinklighthouse for helping to confirm my suspicions about MK!
August 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
My ‘aha’ moment came after a fairly successful year in Mary Kay. It was actually the only year out of 6 that saw any profit. The problem was that when I had a big party, even though I had a sizable inventory, I always wound up short of one or two things. This necessitated trading for product or borrowing and replacing it with my next order. There were constant contests which always encouraged bigger inventory purchases. I am NOT a business woman and have no sales resistance, so I ended up buying more inventory than I sold. The last straw was a ‘fantastic deal’ that the company was offering… with a $600. you could get 1 free Satin Hands kit for every 2 purchased. I fell for it and bought about 45 kits. Then I found an anti Mary Kay site which explained that those sales are ploys to rid MK of products which are about to be changed. Sure enough, the Satin Hands Kits were redesigned! I panicked! I managed to persuade a friend of mine to sell the Satin Hands as a fund raiser for her charitable organization. I was at least able to recover my costs. I realized that for 6 years I had been digging a deeper hole of debt for myself. I turned to ebay and my customers to unload my inventory. I sold at substantial discounts but felt a sense of relief when the last product left. I now purchase one $200. wholesale order a year for the products I still use. That keeps me in makeup for the entire year. Contrary to what your directors may tell you, a consultant only has to order once in the calendar year to retain her status.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Congrats penelope for seeing through the smoke and mirrors that MK uses to help themselves, often at the expense of the consultants.
I’m glad you were able to unload all your “pink elephants”!
September 9th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
My ‘aha’ moment came in Seminar 2001. I really saw Mary Kay for what it was a cult and how fake everything was. One day thinking I could make it if I worked hard enough I came across this site. Thank God I did!!!!!!!!!!
September 10th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
My Aha Moment was in December of O6. It was more like an AHHHH F!@#% moment though! I had just had another Holiday Open house that no one came to. I gave away $2OOO.OO in MK to my local high school! Then did my year end inventory and I still had over $8OOO.OO in inventory! WTF, so I got on my computer and did a search about how to send back inventory to MK, so I did that and ended up here! Oh and I sold I believe it was over $4OOO.OO on Craigslist.org for $4OO! This site has helped me better than any psychiatrist could in explaining why and how I got into MK and how to get over the damage that was done!!!!!! LOL
September 12th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I can’t say the fog lifted all at once, but I can clearly remember the night the “remainder of the fog” went away.
Our SD had told us the week before to work on an acronym for our names. For example, if your name is Amy, you would say somthing like I’m Amazing, Multi-tasking, and Your next queen of sales!!!!! (or some such crap) I felt stupid about it but I worked on my acronym and had it ready to go. I stopped by the store to buy pantyhose before I went. Our unit had a “No Pantyhose No Entry” policy. While not strictly enforced (they wouldn’t throw you out or anything), you weren’t allowed to participate in anything if you weren’t properly dressed. I was a 20 year old secretary working my butt off and making next to nothing at work and absolutely nothing in MK. To me, the price of pantyhose was a fortune.
When I got to the meeting, the SD has us literally dancing to “Pink Cadillac”. A little of the fog started burning along with my flaming cheeks. I love to dance but not under durress with a bunch of women in wool blazers. The whole thing felt weird. After that we had our “meeting” where the SD had people who sold the most come to the front of the room. She then asked the winners for their acronyms. A half hour later, the lecture part of the meeting was coming to a close when she called for questions. I raised my hand and asked when were we supposed to tell our acronyms or should we just write them down. She giggled and said, “I guess you’ll have to sell more next week! Only winners get to tell us their acronyms!!!!!” The rest of the girls started applauding and I felt like a horse’s a**.
After that fiasco, I thought about leaving, but I gave myself a little pep talk about being a good sport. We moved on to having a training “skincare class” for some “hot new tips” on the “new colors coming out!!!!!” so I decided to stay and learn some new stuff.
One of the Senior Consultants who was running the “class” came to me and whispered, “I ran out of spatulas for the foundation. Do you have a few?” I nodded to give her some dignity and handed her some of the ones I had bought for myself. They were plain and generic because I couldn’t afford the ”amazing” Section 2 prices.
The fog burned off forever when she looked at my little plain spatulas, walked to the garbage, and threw them away as if I had handed her a soiled tissue. She was a pastor’s wife and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. With my mouth open, I looked around the room and saw dozens of cookie cutter women in miserable looking outfits squealing and using phrases like, “FAAAAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and “I sold a lipstick to my babysitter … God is sooooo good!!!!!!!!”
I slowly picked up my “beauty case”, tore up my useless and humiliating acronym, slowly made my way to my noisy, horrible Oldsmobile and went home.
No more fog. No more debt. No more sacrificing time with my family to go to useless, uncomfortable meetings. No more @!#$ pantyhose.
I’ve never looked back.
September 12th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Former Pink Attack Dog (may i call you FPAD?)
You are way nicer than me, I thnk I would have given them this acronym:
K = Kiss
M = My
P = Pink
A = A$$
G = Goodbye
Some of our more creative members may be able to do better…but you get the point. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment!
I think your SD, the Senior Consultant (Pastor’s wife?) you took pity on, and everyone of the “hags’ that giggled are sorry examples of the MK “Go Give” attitude.
So much for “Do unto other’s as you would have them do unto you?
If you are not already a PLH member, please come inside our forum! We will welcome you with open arms and show you what real
friendship, respect and love look like!
September 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Oh lisa, Sarah and some you other regular “MK is wonderful” people…explain that hideous display of life in the “pink bubble”. Here’s a whole unit that ought to be ashamed!
FPAD…I hope you returned as much product as you could so you could “gift” your recruiter and SD with the “pink love chargeback”!
September 13th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Former Pink Attack Dog,
Your “sister” consultants and SD should have their hiney’s beaten pink for treating you that way! (((HUGS))) That is the mentality of MK - lies, deceipt and shame in order to keep IBC’s purchasing their way to praise! AGGGHH!
Please click on the forum button & join us there!
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Lipstick and Tam,
Thank you so much for being kind and encouraging. It’s a great help to know that I’m not alone!
I just HAD to tell you what happened a few days ago …
I now manage the office for a very large non-profit. Well, guess who walked in the door last week … the preacher’s wife who threw out my spatulas! I knew right away who she was but I introduced myself to her and her husband as though we had never met. She kept looking at me and said, “You look very familiar.” I brushed it off with a smile and said, “I get that a lot. I must have a generic face.” Her husband gave a polite chuckle but she just kept staring at me. She said, “Did you ever do anything with Mary Kay?” My mind started whirling with all the things I WANTED to do with MK, but I just smiled gently and said, “I went to a meeting or two. Maybe you saw me there.” She dropped the subject and, thankfully, didn’t try to recruit me.
The few short years I spent with MK taught me more than THEY ever dreamed!! Oh, I still remember the crap like: ”Shoot for the moon. If you don’t make it, at least you’ll land among the stars!!”, but I mainly learned that being genuinely nice to someone is a much better way to succeed than to be fake and sappy to make a sale.
Again, thanks for the encouragement. I just couldn’t believe that I ran into that woman mere DAYS after writing about what happened at that meeting so many years ago.
**start humming music from “The Twilight Zone”**
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
The few short years I spent with MK taught me more than THEY ever dreamed!! Oh, I still remember the crap like: ”Shoot for the moon. If you don’t make it, at least you’ll land among the stars!!”, but I mainly learned that being genuinely nice to someone is a much better way to succeed than to be fake and sappy to make a sale.
I love your great attitude FPAD! You’ll fit right in with our group on the Forum!
BTW…you were way nicer to preacher’s wife than she deserved. The redhead in me would have said something like “I remember you! It was your example that made me see MK was not about being “Go Give” or living by the “Golden Rule”
I’m BAD!!!!