My Own Sweatshop

This was one of the sadder moments in my life. The summer after I finished high school I was trying to save a little money before starting college in the fall. I worked at Dairy Queen and was beginning to hate it after the second year. My friends had all quit and I forced myself to stop eating the food (nothing spells temptation like a five gallon bucket of cookie dough in an unmonitored walk-in cooler.) The little pleasure I enjoyed as the cake decorator wasn’t enough.

Desperate for money and unable to find another job I stumbled upon the section of full-page text ads in the back of a craft magazine. There were opportunities to work from home! Sewing crafts! Now as you know I am learning how to sew clothes right now, but I did make a lot of teddy bears and doll clothes as a child (okay, and as a high school student.) So I sorted through all the possible home business opportunities and settled on a kit of bunnies. I had to put down a deposit on the materials and then I would be paid that same amount plus the deposit when I shipped back the finished product.

The bunny parts arrived, enough for twenty. I have to say, nothing made me realize what a pleasant activity making Blizzards is more than making twenty identical, poorly designed rabbits. I hated the sewing, and I was also beginning to feel suspicious about the whole deal. I was going to get $7 per finished rabbit on top of the return of my $140 deposit for materials. If the materials really cost the company that much, that means they would have to sell these for more that $14 a piece. I knew what they looked like. This was not going to be possible. I was determined, though. I finished the bunnies and shipped them off a week before I moved to campus.

A month later my mom called with what I could tell was about to be bad news for me. She received the box of bunnies with a letter from quality control that said my work was unacceptable and I would not be paid until the bunnies met their specifications. The list had about thirty items on it and there were at least five things checked that were wrong. I finally realized that it was a scam, but I bet some people actually do keep working on those damn things, hoping to get it perfect so they can get paid.

Have you guessed yet that the bunnies will be prizes for my next twenty contests? Actually, after a couple years my mom found a reasonably good solution. She donated them to a group that collects blankets and baby things for new unwed mothers.