When You Are Finally Able to Afford Gold Caviar

I am a sucker for a get-rich-quick scheme

The stranger made a beeline for my wife and me through the sea of Christmas shoppers, drowning in the desperation to find the perfect last-minute gift in Walnut Creek's open-air mall, Broadway Plaza.

"Wow, you have an amazing smile!" He said.

"Here we go," I thought, and I strained my eyelids hard so my eyeballs wouldn't roll.

I believe in being polite to everyone, but I know what's coming: "Would you be interested in peddling my sub-par product so I can get rich from your community, retire, and possibly win this month's contest, a pink mid-size sedan? If you get enough of your friends to sell this toothpaste, maybe I can finally take my wife to Maui, like my diamond-level mentor John did before she left me?"

He is not wrong.

I do have a winning smile, but it took me a while to understand that people don't compliment your smile in the first sentence they speak to you.

I am too trusting. I wasn't born to spot when someone was disingenuously complimenting my smile to get something in exchange. It took me a long time to understand that and, unfortunately, many instances in which I believed only to learn later on what people actually wanted. 

One of the first jobs I got in the States was in a "boiler room," calling hundreds of people a day. If you don't know, a boiler room is a place in a building that has heating equipment, but also a term that refers to the place where people call from to sell you worthless things.

Okay, it wasn't quite a boiler room. I wasn't deceiving sweet old people out of their retirements, but I was unsolicitedly calling hundreds of people to sell them crap.

I supervised and trained fifteen Spanish-speaking cold callers to interrupt people's day and ask them if they wanted to help the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by buying subscriptions to magazines they would never read.

That's where I first met Jamal.

He was one of the sales guys in my team, and we immediately bonded over our desire to get rich quickly.

We stayed in touch after we both left DialAmerica, the place where we both learned how to dial for dollars, because the truth is that no one dials for dollars in America anymore because it is cheaper to DialSomewhereElseInTheWorld.

Jamal called me one time and asked, "Can we have a meeting at your house?"

What a weird question to ask a friend. If he wanted to hang out, he didn't need to ask for a "meeting." But I like Jamal, so I told him, "Of course. Come on over for... a meeting...."

Jamal came by on the day of our meeting. He knocked on the door, and I let him in.

The person who walked into my living room was a stranger in my friend's body who asked me, "Can any of your knives cut through a Coca-Cola can?"

I felt silly admitting they didn't; what would I do if a recipe called to sprinkle chards of aluminum over harissa chicken?

My friend pulled a soda can out of his man purse, along with the set of knives he was trying to sell me, and cut the can in two.

I thought, "Wow, what have I been doing with my knives all this time!"
I didn't buy a knife from him that day, but I came really close to buying them because I was afraid of saying no to a man with a bag full of knives, which translates to very little sales and a lot of rejection.

A few months later, as a wedding gift, Jamal gave me a utility knife with a simple but elegant engraving, "Felicidades." It has been more than ten years since our wedding, and I still use that knife almost daily. I chuckle every time I split my Pamplemousse La Croix can in two before stuffing it into a rotisserie chicken.

Over the years, I have fallen prey to the get-rich allure of Multi-Level Marketing schemes.

For me, it wasn't so much the door-knocking sales opportunities but the seminars where they teach you all the secrets of the one percent. I am embarrassed to admit that I have been to more than one of those.
I remember the feeling of excitement at the first one I went to.

There I was. Eagerly taking a step towards becoming a millionaire.

It wasn't my first step, either. I read the book of the financial pseudo-celebrity behind the seminar. The books are always different enough to create a brand but similar enough to recognize what they are when they are displayed at bookstores.

"Poor Niece, Rich Aunt; A multimillionaire's Neocortex, The Millionaire on the cul-de-sac, Holey-Moley, our neighbors are rich!"

There I was, a brand new immigrant, newly arrived in California, ready to consume all the information to get me started on the oh-so-American path from rags to riches.

The seminar organizers were prepared to give me even more than I had bargained for—a thumb drive and a tote bag.

"Wow, being rich makes you generous. This is the reason I moved to the States!" I thought.

I took with me the only person I knew was interested in being rich more than I was, my mom. We took our seats closer to the front. After all, the back is for people who are not ready for overwhelming wealth.

The presentation had no real insider tips.

There was no guy from the book cover.

The seminar was just a hard sale from a guy I had never heard of before who shouted at us, "If you don't buy the next seminar, you are a loser, and you will forever be broke!!!"

I wasn't convinced, but when I saw the first person sign up, I told my mom, "Let's put this on our credit card," which meant her credit card. "It will more than pay for it when we are eating gold caviar in Tahiti with the rest of the family."

Gold caviar is not a thing, but it sounds super fancy and I was finally going to be able to afford fancy!

The seminar wasn't much. It was five hundred dollars, but I didn't have an extra five hundred dollars or a credit card to my name. I had moved to the United States from Colombia, and at 23, I was a nobody to the credit bureaus.

My only credit record at the time was buying a beat-up, gray Nissan Sentra with tinted windows shared by my entire family for the first few years we were here.

I later learned that the car was salvaged from an awful accident and had no airbag, a detail my car dealer forgot to mention when she saddled us up with an "immigrant-exclusive" 30% APR auto loan.

My mom agreed, and we put the seminar on her card. The date for the next workshop was set, and we were going to learn about all the secrets of rich people, handshakes and all.