[LUconn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21 ... wanted=all

For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews
Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

A SEARCH FOR CUSTOMERS Members of a magazine crew trying to sell subscriptions to shoppers at a strip mall in Oceanside, Calif. Such crews become family, many sellers said, with bonds of shared experience.



By IAN URBINA
Published: February 21, 2007
Two days after graduating from high school last June, Jonathan Pope left his home in Miamisburg, Ohio, to join a traveling magazine sales crew, thinking he would get to “talk to people, party at night and see the country.”


TROUBLE AND ARRESTS Officer George Dahl estimated that the Louisville, Ky., Police Department had cited or arrested more than 70 magazine sellers in the last two years.
Over the next six months, he and about 20 other crew members crossed 10 states, peddling subscriptions door to door, 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. Sleeping three to a room in cheap motels, lowest seller on the floor, they survived some days on less than $10 in food money while their earnings were kept “on the books” for later payment.

By then, Mr. Pope said, he had seen several friends severely beaten by managers, he and several other crew members were regularly smoking methamphetamine with prostitutes living down the motel hallway, and there were warrants out for his arrest in five states for selling subscriptions without a permit.

“I knew I was either going to be dead, disappeared or I don’t know what,” Mr. Pope said.

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[Sly Fox]

They still do this garbage? Several of my buddies wasted spring breaks thinking they would make a fortune two decades ago.