[JGATZ]

What region do you work in? I think a lot of people who work at ERAC are not looking to make a career out of it but rather make a bit of money before finding something better. It is a pretty easy job to get right out of school, which is good for those who couldn't find something else. It's the people who really fall into the belief that they are the next General Manager that end up getting hurt or extremely "jaded" as you said. I never truly bought into the system once I had the job. I will admit when I first heard about the ERAC MT program, I was really excited. I ended up finding this site soon after but still gave the job a chance trying to be open to both sides of the story. I am naturally skeptical given my educational background, so training was very interesting to me. It sometimes reminded of a Quixtar/Amway presentation when the GM spoke. I unfortunately got lured into that pyramid scheme for about 48 hours back in college before I wised up. Ever since then, I am extremely careful when persuasion is present. My several months at ERAC were like a psychological field experiment where I got to see cult behavior, mentally disturbed customers, and the weapons of influence used on employees by upper management. It was intriguing to observe how this company was able recruit so many unsuspecting college grads and make them truly believe they would be future millionaires. I sometimes wish I would have called them out on all the classic persuasion techniques they used and backed it up with empirical research. However, I am sure I would have confused much of the upper management and not have lasted as long as I did. Plus, I wouldn't have had the time to go back through my old textbooks since I was working from 7:00AM -7:30PM most nights.

Read the book INFLUENCE by Robert Cialdini, and you will understand what I am talking about.