Katie & Justin

[stag_intro]”And we had to wake up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday to do it.” — Justin[/stag_intro]

I’ve had quite a few strange experiences in my life, but I think this one might top the list.

And I’m sharing it here on this blog because it all started with an innocent trip to a wedding expo.

After a few weeks (OK, months) of enjoying the engagement carefree, I went to a wedding fair at a hotel in downtown Chicago with my friend Kristine to finally kick-start my wedding planning. It was basically a big room filled with vendors trying to sell you things. We mostly went to just hang out and get free stuff. (Nearly every booth there offered you the chance to win something by entering your name in a contest, which, of course, we did at every chance.)

The event was not really helpful, but fun nonetheless.

About a week or so after we attended, Kristine and I both heard back from a few places saying we won something. One company in particular gave me a phone call and said I won two free plane tickets and a hotel stay for one weekend for anywhere in the U.S.

Uh-huh, suuuure, whatever lady, I thought. She went on insisting there was no catch, referencing the wedding expo, which led me to think she had some credibility. But there was one requirement: We had to attend a presentation about their travel agency. She explained that they’re trying to convince people that travel agents can still be relevant and beneficial — since most people just book their trips on the internet.

“There are no strings attached because we want you to like us and we want you to tell your friends about us, and maybe even book with us in the future,” she pressed on, since I was still skeptical.

OK, what’s the worst that could happen?

Justin, however, wasn’t convinced. “There’s no such thing as free,” he said.

Was it sketchy? Yes. But ultimately we decided it could be a funny story, so we RSVP’d yes.

As soon as we pulled up to the location in Lombard we knew we were in for a ride. It looked like one of those ugly government buildings from the ’70s, which I just googled and found out is called “brutalist” architecture: “fortress-like, with a predominance of exposed concrete” and “repeated modular elements forming masses representing specific functional zones,” according to Wikipedia.

Well, we got lost in those “zones” fairly quickly. Each corridor looked just like the last. Seemed like the kind of place where you could rent an office space — and then get out quickly.

“What did you get me into?” Justin said.

“Are we gonna die? We’re not gonna die, right?” I said as we wandered.

We finally found the room and the nameplate outside the door did not match the name of the company they originally told me. Oh boy, here we go!

Once inside we sat in a waiting room and filled out a survey about vacations: how often do you travel/where do you want to go/etc. I got myself some free coffee and cookies.

“See, this isn’t so bad,” I told Justin.

Then we were escorted into a larger meeting room for the presentation. There were maybe 30 people with us in the audience, a diverse group, mostly couples and most older than us.

A man came in and delivered a sales pitch, not for a travel agency but for an exclusive “travel club” — which also had a different name from both the nameplate outside the office and the name they gave me over the phone. With a membership to this club, you could stay at the highest rated hotels anywhere in the world as many times as you like, for as long you like, and for the rest of your life!!! And once you join, your membership can be passed on to your kids and then your kids’ kids! For only one upfront payment of $10,000 and then $400 a year!! What a deal!

It was the most ridiculous proposal I’ve ever heard. But it was kind of fascinating to watch his sales tactics, like someone trying to peddle penny stocks. He talked super fast, told sympathetic stories about sick grandparents, repeated positive phrases and conveniently brushed over the price tag. Oh, and he had the creepiest smile and would not stop smiling — for 45 minutes straight.

But the strangest thing of all was the audience. Everyone seemed really into it. They were laughing, responding, shaking their heads. Not only were they paying attention, but some of them actually seemed interested. Why don’t these people look horrified?!

“Would you like me to cut this presentation in half?” the guy asked, followed by a few cheers in the room. It was supposed to be an hour and a half, but at the 45 minute mark he left. Oh, thank God.

But it was a lie. Another guy came in, with an equally creepy smile, and gave the same spiel for another 45 minutes. At one point he referenced the city in which the company was headquartered, but it was a different city from what the first guy said. He also mentioned the year that they started, and that, too, was a different year. I was tempted to give him a hard time and start asking questions, but I didn’t want to prolong the thing any longer.

Eventually the speech was over but once again we weren’t in the clear. We had to “briefly” meet with one of their agents, so we were led to a classroom where each couple was paired with a salesperson at a small desk. At the front of the room, another “owner” of the company went through the numbers again to explain how great of a deal this club membership was.

“How much do you think it would cost to go to Hawaii?” he asked, writing numbers on a whiteboard framed with balloons. The salesmen at the desks very eagerly nodded and smiled as the man spoke. They were constantly chirping in with: “Oh wow!” “That’s great!” “Amazing!”

Seriously, where are we and who ARE these people? 

Suddenly the man offered a blue-light special for the first three people to sign up, and hands shot up all around the room. Everyone whooped and clapped and cheered as one-by-one each of the couples signed up. I kept waiting for the hidden camera crew to jump out, but it was no joke. It felt like a cult, and everyone there was a part of it except us.

Next we had to talk to the agent at our table. He was a young guy, couldn’t have been older than 18 or 19. He seemed a little nervous and did whatever he could to keep a conversation going, but we were having none of it.

“So, what was your favorite part of the presentation?” he opened with.

“Ummmmmm,” I said, looking at Justin for an answer but we both had nothing. After an uncomfortably long pause, I finally spit it out: “the slides.”

“The slides?” he asked. I don’t think he ever heard that one before.

“Yeah, the pictures were, ummm, nice.” There may have been one tiny photo of a beach shown in the power point presentation, but that was the best answer I could come up with. Justin and I tried so hard to hold in our laughter.

After a few more awkward moments, the kid figured out that we were going to be difficult and kept desperately trying to ask any question that would solicit a “yes,” no matter what the question.

“So, do you like food?” he asked.

“I guess,” I responded.

“What kind of food do you like?”

“Uhhh, seafood.”

“What kind of seafood?”

“All of it.”

“Do you like lobster?”

“No.”

This went on for awhile. Meanwhile, throughout the room, people were signing up left and right, and each time the whole room erupted in celebration. Eventually it whittled down to just a handful of people left. I kind of felt bad for our agent, who was really struggling to keep us there.

“Do you like vacations?”

“No.”

“What?! Come on, you must like vacations!”

“No.”

“If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?”

“Umm, I don’t really want to go anywhere.”

“What about the places you wrote down on your survey? You said you wanted to go to Italy and Thailand?”

“Not really, I kinda just made that up.”

“What about a honeymoon? Where do you want to go for your honeymoon?”

“Nowhere.”

“Really? You don’t want a honeymoon?”

“No. We don’t like vacations.”

Finally Justin interrupted. “Look, we’re not going to sign up or buy anything. Can we just get our voucher and go?”

The kid knew we weren’t budging, but something seemed to be holding him back. “Yeah,” he whispered and looked nervously around the room for the owner. “But I’m not allowed to get up.”

“Are we????” I said, exchanging a look with Justin.

The kid waived his almighty leader over and tried to let him down nicely by saying that we liked the idea of the program but we were about to get married and weren’t ready to commit to a membership at this time.

“OK, well let me ask you this,” the guy said to us. “Would you take it if it was free?”

“No.”

“What?! Even if it was FREE?”

“No.”

“Well where would you like to travel?”

“We don’t like vacations.”

“What?! You don’t like vacations?”

“No.”

“Where are you going for your honeymoon?”

“Nowhere.”

“Here, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do,” he said, scratching a number on a piece of paper. “Just for you two, since you’re getting married, I’m gonna give you half off, and I’ll throw in three extra stars. There, I just paid for your honeymoon.” The stars were some stupid metric for something, but I had stopped paying attention at that part of the presentation.

“No, thanks. Can we just get our voucher?”

The man got pissed, threw down the pen and grumbled about how he never heard of anyone not liking vacations. But we were finally free to go. The kid, who still seemed scared, escorted us out and handed us our “free tickets,” aka a lousy mail-in rebate.

“How do people like that even EXIST?” I said to Justin in the car, cracking up the whole way home.

We figured that most of the people in the audience were planted, but we had to know more about this little operation. We googled the name of the travel club and found out it basically works like a Pyramid scheme and that kid who was our salesman was probably getting set-up at that event as well.

Basically, the company recruits salespeople and convinces them that the travel club memberships are amazing deals and very easy to sell. And when the travel agents can’t sell the memberships, they make them feel like it was their fault and then make them pay for additional training on how to be a good salesmen. So the company is actually making money off its recruiters, not the memberships.

Just for kicks, I recently checked out the original email I received from the “travel agency.” The website now links to Expedia and when I tried to give “Jennifer” another call, I kept getting a busy signal.

That’s too bad, because I kinda want to go back again and bring more people to experience the absurdity!