One of my first job interviews after college was with a "Marketing Company". I had gone to a fairly good college and had interviewed for financial services jobs and other corporate jobs (can negotiate salary, bonuses, benefits, gym memberships, etc.). But this was my one foray into "marketing" and the alarm bells started ringing almost immediately.

The first visit was an interview/ridealong. The morning meeting was in a temp office in a strip mall with guys who looked like they just bought their suits from Walmart and have already finished their second pack of cigarettes for the day. I still had no idea what was being "marketed". I knew, after about 10 minutes in the office, that this was going to be a long day. I should have left right then.

I got in the car with my ride-along guy. And we went from strip mall to strip mall, no set list of places or leads, and just walked in and asked to speak to the manager. We were selling laminated OSHA regulation posters. So the guy would semi-pretend to be some sort of official dude and ask to see the breakroom or wherever OSHA regulations were supposed to be posted. He would pretend like there's some problem and they don't this post or that, so he would then pitch their posters for the company to order.

The kicker?

You are meant to print these posters from the OSHA website for free. And I learned this after we walked into a pharmacy and the pharmacist could see this guy's bullshit immediately. And mentioned something like, "and we've been warned about people trying to sell us OSHA stuff we don't need. It's all on the website."

The scummy guy I was riding along with decided to end the day after that visit and drove us back to the office. I just walked to my car and left. I have never felt like such a piece of low life shit in my entire life.