Whither Clown Monkeys?

It occurred to me the other day that I've not been spammed by the ClownMonkey t-shirt people for a while. No, not so much as being informed of the most recent $100 funny t-shirt slogan (which would have been won by someone else, natch). So I typed in their URL and.....nothing comes up. Good old Tim still owns the domain, it just isn't hosted anywhere anymore. Hmmmmm...no message boards, no people stumbling over themselves to "audition" for customer service positions. I wonder wot happened???

I'd had the suspicion that the posts they put on every Craigslist site in the country where some sort of experiment, either for school or some marketing project (thesis, anyone?) about what fools people were willing to make of themselves for a chance at a job. At one point, in response to my CMC posts, someone commented that he was "high school friend" of the guy running the show and he was an upright businessman and what the hell was my problem if I had nothing better to do than run him down. LOL Hey I'm just outlining my experience to save someone else the bother of entertaining hope for something that has zero chance of working out. Perhaps this commenter missed the posts of others who said their experiences were essentially the same as mine. Guess he missed those posts made by others on complaint sites about their impressions. Nyo well.

The ClownMonkey Myspace page is still up, however. I scrolled through the comments there and it appears that toward the end of January, Myspace "friends" were asking whether this outfit ever hired anyone. Well, I guess it wasn't just me...

I Really Want to Let the Monkeys Go...

...but people keep commenting on them and it just gets more bizarre by the hour.

I posted at 12:46 AM on the 14th that CMC didn't even have office space, just a rented mailbox. People are commenting here and elsewhere about how hinky the entire operation seems. I looked at their board today and see a static post dated 3:30PM on the 14th asking whether anyone knows of office space in San Francisco and that the address given is only a temporary mailbox. We already knew that, pal. Even I, one of the most clueless people around when it comes to business and being motivated by profit, would not dream of asking the 7000 people who've applied for 10 jobs to find office space for me. But then, I guess it fits with the pattern to date. Ask other people for content ideas, ask your board posters to vote on the funniest content, ask other people whether their private information can be shopped out to other companies, ask other people to find office space for them. Beg these people to be patient while you review thousands of resumes while at the same time you continue to post your ads for jobs. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I still don't know what the scam is, but when it all comes out in the wash I will be vastly amused. Except for the poor schlubs who wasted a lot of time and energy applying for non-existent jobs.

Yes, Tim. What DO people think when they google you? How so you think they found me? How do you think I found out about ripoffreport.com?
From his apparently parent site, whizclick.com:

Branding

What do people think of when they hear your name? Do they trust you? What results appear when people “Google you”? We can help you with this.

Clown Monkey Update Part Deux

Okay, now they are just annoying the heck out of me.

Found this in my inbox this morning:

Re: Online Interview

Some people had a problem with the online job audition. Try the link below:
http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/clownmonkeyclothing/vpost?id=3227734


Become our friend on MySpace !
http://www.myspace.com/clownmonkeys


Much monkey love !!!
The Clown Monkeys

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not auditioning! Leave me alone!

Clown Monkey Update

I did some rooting around the web and found complaints about them at RipOffReport. Another complaint quotes Mr White's somewhat less than diplomatic reply, which informs the questioner that she had been banned from the hallowed boards for overposting. How can someone "overpost" when people are encouraged to use the same board to "audition?"

I also discovered that the founder, Tim White, also runs WhizClick.com, a marketing site. And the address that results from a whois lookup points not to some rarefied San Francisco office building, but to a rarefied SF mailbox business. The phone numbers associated with these sites are all cells, some of them out of the Sacramento area code. This merely adds fuel to my suspicion that the entire operation is a marketing scheme and there are no jobs to be had for anyone. (It has even been suggested that this joint is merely a front for skip tracers or bill collectors. The person who made this suggestion may have a valid point here and based on what I've seen from CMC so far, it wouldn't surprise me at all).

Well, I had pretty much forgotten about them as I've been busy writing up answers to supplementary questions to apply for real jobs. Imagine my surprise, then, when I got email this morning congratulating me for making it past the initial screening and was invited to participate in the "online interview." Yes, I was so thrilled re: same that I forgot all about it until several hours after Daniele got up. I scoffed, but he encouraged me to answer the questions anyway.

I clicked the link and as is my wont, viewed the source code for the page. (I admit I'm paranoid about certain things like tracking scripts and whatnot). I edited the code to remove most of the Javascript, saved it as HTML and opened it in my browser. I had copied the questions earlier and written up answers. I could tell by the questions themselves and the blurb at the top of the page that CMC thinks they are the second coming of Nike or Microsoft. I won't mention the questions here, per the directive:

Please do not discuss this interview or mention it online (including the monkey message board or elsewhere). This includes private messaging other members to see if they were asked to take this step or comparing your answers to theirs. This is for your protection and privacy.

Anyhoo, the questions themselves were not so "out of the box" that I didn't already have answers prepared for most of them. I received an acknowledgment mail later. Yep, you guessed it, I was encouraged to "increase my chances" of being hired by "auditioning" on their lame message board. Hey here's an idea: how about actually reading resumes and selecting people based on their knowledge, skills and abilities instead of their willingness to suck up and act the fool? Radical idea, I know.

I don't think so Sparky. I have real jobs to apply for and serious applications to fill out. I don't have time to continue jumping through your self important hoops. Buh-bye and thanks for playing.

Clown Monkey Clothing

I've been spending quite a bit of time on CraigsList lately as it seems that quite a few local employers are posting jobs on it. Many of these are obviously scammish work-at-home schemes and can be dismissed out of hand. Others are a little more subtle in their approach and it takes a little longer to figure out what's up.

An outfit calling itself Clown Monkey Clothing posted ads -- throughout the country, apparently -- for virtual customer service reps. Since I'm online most of the time anyway and not that far removed from my call center experience I thought I'd give it a shot. Now, I'm not exactly a neophyte in the work force and I think I have some idea about how to run a business and find employees. CMC has enough seemingly bizarre practices that ultimately one can come to no other conclusion than they are either 1) a scam, 2) a convoluted marketing ploy or 3) incompetent.

It's not that I feel scammed at this point, but I really don't believe they have any jobs, certainly what I thought I applied for at any rate, and no one has approached me for money so I can't really say I've been victimized.

Okay, so I saw the ad, thought it was a job I could do and it would fit into my life easily. I emailed them and was encouraged to go to their site and "audition" for a job on their message boards, as the response to their ad had been overwhelming. Well sorry kiddies, I am not a performing artist and I do not "audition" for jobs as a librarian, editor, author, tech support or virtual customer service rep.

They also offered an option to submit ideas for humorous t-shirt messages, saying that if your slogan was chosen you'd received $100. Again I thought, what the hell and submitted some slogans on shirts at my Cafe Press store. And again, a nice cheap way for them to get content to put on a shirt (and yes, I will be watching to see whether they use any of my suggestions without coughing up the payment). A list of some of the submission was posted and let me tell you: many of these were not original slogans and may be under someone's copyright. Many more were simply not particularly funny.

Threads were started on the message board asking participants which slogans were the funniest. Again, if it were my business I would make those kinds of editorial decisions and not leave it up to people who thought they were applying for work. But still it raises a red flag. If they have the resources to start a t-shirt company, why don't they have content already in place? And when you go to the virtual store (there is only one design offered, and that is the lame monkey logo "commemorative" shirt for $30. My post indicating that I contacted them to earn money, not spend it, was deleted from the boards about 5 minutes after I posted it.

Many posts from alleged staff of CMC appeared bemoaning the flood of resumes received and our indulgence was begged while this sorely understaffed company continued to review job applicants. Meanwhile, clueless people who posted lame resumes (despite being told not to post personal information). Eventually the "founder" posted something about wishing he could hire all 5,000 applicants but since he could not, would people mind if he shared their information with other employers.

As bad as it is that this company seems to be exploiting the economy and the need for people to have something to hope for and jump through hoops to attain, the worst thing of all in my book is that now, after submitting my resume, they see fit to spam me. I don't want to block them because on the off chance that there is a job (highly doubtful) I want them to be contact me. I've have several emails from them, most with the subject heading "re: Employment Application," that turns out to be a link back to the message board. Listen people, what you have posting there is a bunch of suck ups desperate enough for a job that they think posting will actually get it for them. If I want to go to that board I will. Don't spam me with links to it under the guise of offering me work. Homey don't play dat.

Besides, monkeys are just freaking creepy.