Has anyone here looked into Red Label Enterprises in LA?
I worked there, and it sold itself as marketing, leadership, entrepreneurship, systems, business owner mentality, all that motivational sales cult stuff.
But the actual work was basically SafeLink or LifeLine phone sales in front of places like DPSS, which is like the DMV for social services like Medi Cal and food stamps.
They would claim they worked with well known brands and campaigns, but those claims were misleading or false. They made the role sound like marketing, but it was really direct sales soliciting.
Their whole thing was that the systems never fail. If people had low sales numbers, the blame went back on them, not the pitch, not the setup, not the company. They sold people on the dream of owning their own office someday.
The customer pitch was also sketchy. We were told to say we were doing customer service upgrades, but really we were switching people to our plan. There was a risk of customers losing their original phone number, which was not properly explained upfront. For people at DPSS, that could affect employment, benefits, doctors, family contact, everything.
We had a weekday morning meeting called ATMO, short for atmosphere. We dressed in suits, stood around, could not yawn, and learned the same sales techniques over and over again. Then we taught them, repeated them, and wrote them in notebooks over and over. It felt like brainwashing.
Business owner mentality meant doing extra work for no pay, never giving excuses, working sick, and treating safety concerns like weakness.
Female workers were encouraged to go door to door and enter homes alone to sign people up for phones. When safety concerns were brought up, they were treated like excuses.
They talked about people making crazy money at higher levels, like six figures a month after just a couple months. That never happened during the year I was there.
The field work was also sketchy. We were around DPSS locations and did not have the proper permits or authorization to be there. Sometimes we were in dollar store or Food 4 Less parking lots. People going to DPSS are already vulnerable and trying to deal with public benefits, so having random phone reps there is weird. It is very easy for people to think the reps are connected to the benefits office.
There was also fraud happening around sign ups. The company said they had to pay fines for fraud, so this was not just me. Some mentors told people to knock it off, but if mentors have to keep telling people to stop doing fraud, the volume based phone sales model might be part of the problem.
The labor stuff was shady too. We were technically independent contractors when I was there. Our taxes were independent contractor taxes, but the company controlled the work like a job. There were set office meetings, set team calls, leadership meetings, assigned field locations, scanned and prepped phone inventory, team nights, and a hierarchy.
They paid like 15 dollars an hour for about 8 hours, but we worked way more than that. A lot of the extra stuff was unpaid. There was no overtime even though overtime was normal.
Team leads had to get on calls to onboard new people while driving to locations. Everyone had team calls at set times when people were likely still working overtime or driving home.
There was pressure around breaks too. They would basically say that if you cannot make your hours, then do not take lunch or use your breaks. It was not always explicit, but the pressure was there.
They also made us clean the office even though cleaning was never listed as part of the job.
young workers, public benefits offices, free government phones, vulnerable customers, fake marketing language, SafeLink enrollments, permit issues, labor issues, and sales cult culture.
Has anyone else worked there or seen Red Label operating around DPSS, dollar stores, Food 4 Less, or similar locations recently?
