Simply put, Blackstone Consulting, sells Quest phoneinternet services and DirecTV cable door to door. Meaning, the "sales" people, drive to residential communities and walk door to door, knocking on unsuspecting homeowner's doors, trying to sell them DirectTV and Quest. Which might not be such a bad gig: except for all the obvious BS.

1. You have to walk door to door in communities you are unfamiliar with, asking total strangers to let you in their home. Who knows whose door you might be knocking on. A rapist, a murder, a drug addict?

2. You do this door to door selling between the hours of 3PM and 8PM. Which means in a Minnesota Winter, you have about 2.5 hours of light while you are out "In the Field" Imagine being in North Minneapolis at 8PM in January, knocking on the doors of local residents. Sounds fun and safe right?

3. There is no one with you, or back in the main office, who keeps track of where you are or how you are doing. You get called every few hours to see if you have made a sale, but certainly not to see where you are and if you are OK.

4. You have to pay for your own gas to your "territory" assignment each day. This can mean up to 20 - 40 miles of driving on your dime each day.

5. You are required to participate in Thursday Night Team night. Which is just a way for the manager, Jeremy, to hit on all his female employees, rattle on about how rich he is, make everyone else spend money on drinks and bar food, and encourage you to drink and drive.

6. Blackstone Consulting is a Pyramid Scheme. You will never make any kind of real money until you start to hire people under you. At most, without employees under you, you will make $500 a week, working 12 hour days. When you start to have employees under you, on your Team, you are responsible for all their training and day to day administrative tasks; but, you do not get a pay raise, or cut of their "action", until you have 10 people under you, and you have been made an offical "Assistant Manager". There was only one assistant manager in the whole office of 20.

7. You buy all your stuff for the job. You are expected to wear dress clothes to the Morning Meetings, and then a uniform that you pay for out in the field.

You have to use your personal cell phone for the job. You are on the phone nearly the entire time you are with a customer, talking with the call center in Mexico to place an order. These calls can, and often do take, up to a half hour each. Many times longer.

8. The people there are really not nice at all. The Manager is especially creepy. Think of the guy you knew in High School who was a total jerk to everyone he met, and thought that made him the coolest guy in around. That's Jeremy. The first time I ever spoke to him, without any provocation from me, he started ranting on about how much money he makes and how I couldn't possibly be making his kind of bank. Frankly, I think it says a lot about a person's attributes if they consider their checking account balance to be their best one.

8 (continued). The rest of the people in the office were either drinking the "Kool Aide" and totally dismissive about the fact that they made no money working 12 hour days; or, the employees where scared, cowering, kids who were clearly looking for a way out of a situation that was increasingly becoming a nightmare.

9. Did I mention the Manger Jeremy is a creep. Seriously, this guy is Gordon Geco (Wallstreet) meets Patrick Baitman (American Psycho). I can't imagine that Webster's can print a dictionary without adding a picture of Jeremy next to Douchebag.

10. There is no medical insurance. My buddy takes daily medication and took this job, in part, because he was supposed to receive health insurance. He stuck it out with them for several months, asking daily about insurance, always being told it was "in the works", that they were switch providers and that's what was taking so long. Eventually, he found out for the more veteran employees, that there was no way you would get health insurance unless you made Assistant Manager. My buddy had to quit because his pay checks were so small they could not cover the cost of his meds.

11. You make less then the Managers tell you will on each sale. Nevermind, if the person you are selling to cancels their order after you leave, because, the orders that do go through you get paid half of what they tell you you are going to receive. There were several consecutive weeks that my friend didn't get paid at all, being told that there was a mix up with checks. It turned out that my buddy and the other lower level employees didn't get paid for 4 weeks so that Jeremy could put a down payment on the Carlson Towers building. Talk about loyalty to your staff.

I sincerely hope, that if you are applying with Blackstone Consulting Inc., you reconsider. Blackstone is not the company they claim to be, it is not the job they advertise it to be: It's a dangerous, low paying, low prestige, high pressure, and costly job. For these reasons, I believe that Blackstone Consulting Inc., is the worst company to work for in MN.