Former Agent Stories

I worked for a mag crew for a long time. I saw kids beat, girls taken advantage of or convinced to get abortions, drug use, car wrecks, and everything else you could imagine.. I also know that most managers scam you, don't pay their taxes, and use and abuse young to make them richer...

I am now 65 years old but the nightmares still come. I was 18 years old and answered an Ad to travel all over America. I had come from the UK. I was hired immediately, and asked for my parents name and address at the time. My friends in New York begged me not to go but I did not listen. We were taken to another state that same day. I was supposed to be trained for 3 days but being a showoff I learned in 1 day and started selling. I said I was an exchange student. A few days went by and I wanted to leave. The owner of the crew called me into a room at night and brutally raped me. I was also beaten up a few times. I ran away a few times but he aways found me - how I will never know. I was in the streets 12 -14 hours a day and when my quota wasn't met I was beaten. I brought some family from New York when we were back there and they got so scared they never talked to me again. I went to the port authority and made about 7 trips wearing 6 layers of clothing and stashed them in a locker. I ran away to Florida. He took my 75 year old Aunt in a plane as he didn't have guardianship of me. When I was found I was told if I did not come back my father would be killed. I went to the police a few times and they showed me a rap sheet but could do nothing. This is just a skeleton letter of the horrors of magazine selling. I still live in fear although he is dead now the crews are still going on. Listen all you young people DONT GO NEAR MAGAZINE CREWS you will ruin your life! Thanks for listening. Please let me know when this is posted or if you want to ask me anything else thanks.

Mag Life

There was a time in my life where i needed a job so bad, anyone that came by with an offer could catch my ear instantly --no matter what the catch, and that's how the story begins.

I was hanging around this apartment complex talking to my friends when this random guy walked up to me and started his magazine shpeal. He said something about earning 35,000 points for $2,000 and a trip to Hawaii, and I said no, haha. Eventually he asked my friend and I if we needed jobs, and since we had both just gotten kicked out of our parents houses and we were desperate for some cash I said yeah. He called his manager, told us to pack up our stuff, and we headed to the hotel to start our Mag Crew journey.
We got to the Travelodge hotel in Springdale and started walking around and met some people, mostly managers, and eventually made out way to the meeting room. When we got to the meeting room, we were told to wait outside and fill out some papers for our employment, and while we were doing this mag crew agents swarmed us and started to ask us questions --I guess you could say it was a "get to know you" celebration. When our papers were filled out, the kid who hired us brought our stuff up to our room and Chris and I just chilled for a bit.

The next day was our first day of training, I went out on drop with Kayla and Chris went out with Debbie. The basic concept of the whole job was this: First, you GOTTA know your 5 steps, 1. hey my name is Justin, just stopped by to get you to back me up in this years NCA contest have you heard about it? no? sweet, let me tell you about it 2. What it is 50 guys, 50 girls 3. 35,000 points 4. 2 G's, ($2,000) a trip overseas, and the best part is 5. I'm winning. It was pretty much as simple as that, but you had to add your own enthusiasm, creativity, cockiness, kindness, person-ability, and anything else you think you could use to sell magazines.. seriously. For the next hour and a half we knocked doors and got a couple of sales, and then our manager Mark, (who was Kayla's boyfriend at the time) picked us up. The 2nd drop was pretty pointless, i sat on the curb while she knocked doors, I mean how the hell am I supposed to learn anything about selling magazines when she won't even let me knock doors with her. That was pretty much the whole first day, nothing too exciting.. oh yeah, i lost one of my shoes, that sucked pretty bad, but i got over it, i mean it's just a shoe.

The next day, and the 3 weeks that followed were the craziest, wildest, most memorable days I have ever lived, no joke. Like, some of the things that happened, I would never be able to lie about, and I've made up some insane lies in my day.. There were many instances where my manager Mark would drive drunk or tweaked out on meth and almost get us arrested. One time we were approaching this stoplight and it was raining, and the tires on the minivan just happened to be bald, Mark was drunk of course and not paying attention, and just barely missed the car in front of us by driving on the side of the road.

There was a night when I decided to get completely wasted like the white boys who wear there skinny jeans, and so I did. I was in my room drinking when Bradley and Mark came in to chill and talk shop for a little while, which was cool because managers were busy most of the time. So we were just hangin out laughin and havin a good time while I was completely trashed, I honestly can’t remember what happened after they left the room, but when I woke up in the morning, Debbie was in bed with me and my hands were wrapped up in hers and we were totally spooning, and yes, she was wasted the night before as well. Something odd about this was I had my shirt on and my belt looped through my pants when I went to bed, but when I woke up my shirt was off and my belt was undone, so idk… I guess shit happens when you get wasted like the white boys.

I remember when we were staying at the America's Best Value inn, a few things happened that rocked Mag crew just a little bit. Chris and I hopped in JR's pimped out ride with chrome rims and a badass system and made our way to the Kroger to get some groceries. After he parked, Bradley was scoping out the area when we were swarmed by a van full of federal agents and told to stay in the car, I thought we were fucked --but WE weren't.. JR was. Apparently he had 9 warrants out for his arrest, but Bradley reassured us that the Fed's usually lie and he only has 1.. riiiiight, well idk, but whatever. Another thing that happened while we were staying at this hotel was a huge fight, not like 4 or 5 people, naa like 15 people.. and that's only counting the ones who were on our side. Mark was taking shit to the black people who were staying at the hotel, calling them "Niggers" which is ridiculous, i mean if I was black, and a white guy called me a nigger, I'd hang him from a tree in HIS front yard, but anyways.. One of the taller black guys was talking shit to john about something on the 2nd floor of the hotel, so john started talking shit, and then entire mag crew went up there to see what was going on. The tall black guy started swingin, and john swung back, they eventually got on the ground and the grandma of one of the young black dudes started kicking john in the ribs. The fight broke up for a second, and when I saw john, his nose had been broken (again) and the black dude had a bleeding black eye. This is the point when the shorter black dude started talking shit to this other john, this shorter red headed power agent, now he may be small, but he has ALOT of fight in him. They made their way to the parking lot and all of the mag agents followed, it was 2 black guys and a grandma against a mag crew, doesn't that suck.. The tall black dude hit Bradley in the face, and then Josh went behind the black guy and punched him in the back of the head and it all started again. The grandma grabbed a 2x4 board with nails in it and started to hit john with it until she was knocked to the ground, and when she got up, she grabbed a 1/5th bottle and hit Chris over the head with it, who in turn punched her in the face and kicked her in the ribs. At the end of all this, there was a black guy on the 2nd floor of the hotel who's head had been cracked open so bad you could see his brain, no joke, he was taken from the 2nd story by a fire truck with a stretcher. Chris ended up with a severely sprained foot that hurt him for weeks to come. After all of this happened, a total of 7 cop cars arrived, in either SUV's or regular cop cars, and there were at least 10 cops questioning us. At this point, our managers told us it was time to pack up our stuff, because we were jumping to a new city, so we did just that, and after an hour or so, the police escorted us out of the town and we were on our way.

After we jumped to a new town, we still had problems with cops, especially on T (T is territory) I remember a few times when people would come back to the hotel at 10 o'clock at night after walking back from the police station because that got in trouble for soliciting. A time (or two) I had a run-in with the police, actually it was probably about 3 times a week, and I was actually arrested 2 times in the same day for soliciting. The first time, it was midday, and I was just working my T and I knocked on the wrong persons door and got heat, which sucked. The second time, I was working power homes, when this snobby rich guy got on my ass because i didn't have a permit, so he called the cops. I decided to knock some more doors, and while I was talking to this guy, the cop rolled up and I got busted.. AGAIN. My boss wasn't very happy, 1. because the cop took my padcase and wouldn’t give it back until after I had gone to court, and 2. I think I'm the only one who's ever been arrested twice in the same day for selling magazines, go figure. Besides that though, this town was pretty cool.. cop wise, but there's another story, haha.

Oh yeah, Mark was a total dick the whole time he was on mag crew, he was always yelling at Kayla or fighting with her, I remember a few times he actually hit her. The worst part about that is she’s pregnant, yeah for real. One morning when the power went out because of this storm that went through Illinois the night before, I was laying in bed chillin, trying to wake up and such when I hear Kayla screaming about Mark raping her, and how he pissed the bed and how that’s nasty and such. When I looked over, Mark was on top of Kayla, and Kayla was yelling for him to get off and stop raping her, I felt so bad for her, he was such a dick.. Eventually he got too cocky and Joey punched him in the face for being a jerk which I thought was amusing, and after that, Mark got fired, so that was nice as well. Chris and I then went to Joey’s crew!

So I was working my T in this small town with only 2 white people, (which is totally cool, it's just different, growing up in Arkansas and all) and i had 4 streets to work with my friend Nick, so we split it up and got to work. Pickup time was at 1:45, and I was on the street I was supposed to get picked up on from 1:30-2:30, so at about 3 I called my manager Joey and asked what was up, and he told me to call Toni, my car handler that day, so I did, and his phone was dead.. oh shit. This is the part where things go from ok-->bad-->worse-->shitty-->rock-fuckin-bottom. I went back to this lady's house named Kim and chilled with her for a bit and got this huge sandwich from her along with a couple bottles of water and ventured to the nearest strip mall, about 5 miles away, and then walked back to her house. We talked for a little while, and then she gave me some more water and I made my way to the interstate. As i made my way to the interstate, i met this guy who gave me $5, which I used at the nearest supermarket to get something to eat, and since that was the only money I had, the only place I could sleep was a fast food place that was still open.. either that or a dunkin donuts, woohoo!

After i woke up in the dunkin donuts bathroom at 4 in the morning to some guy knocking on the door, I made my way closer to the interstate. After talking to a few people in this Mcdonald's and getting an inspirational lecture from an older black guy, this hispanic guy gave me some money for food, which I used at this polish eatery. After that, i was walking towards the nearest parkway trying to get back to my hotel, when this hispanic Arizona tea vendor gave me a ride to the beggining of the parkway, and I started walking. About a mile and a half down the road, this cop came blaring his sirens about 5 feet from where I was walking, and it scared the shit out of me because I was pretty sure it wasn't illegal to walk down the highway.. but I guess I was wrong. After talking to him, another cop, and then this female cop, the 1st cop called my boss and told me he was going to pick me up at the mcdonalds down the road in a little bit, so i was like cool. So the cop gave me a ride over there, and i went inside and fell asleep on a table. I woke up about 30 minutes later, and sat there for about 4 hours waiting for someone to show up, but knowone ever did. After realizing that knowone was going to pick me up, I headed over to this really cool shop where this guy told me that it was 32 miles back to my hotel, I knew it was a long way, but i HAD to get back somehow, so I started walking and walking and walking, some more walking came my way and i took it in stride as i made my way through a few cities in the dark until I came upon this road that was surrounded by a forest.. The perfect horror movie spot to be killed by someone in the dark. But I survived, and eventually made my way to this really nice Holiday Inn, and since I was about to collapse from walking forever, I fell asleep on a couch in the lobby, much better than sleeping in a dunkin donuts bathroom.

When I woke up the next morning, I made my way to the nearest parkway and stuck out my thumb for a ride, but the only person interested in giving me a ride was another cop.. wtf. He told me I couldn't walk on the parkway, which i already knew from the day before, but there was something different about this instance with a cop, he actually gave me a ride to a truck stop so that a trucker could give me a ride back to the hotel! ..or at least closer than I was. After I got to the truck stop, I found this cool trucker who offered to give me a ride to the closest train station. After we got there, he came and checked outthe station with me to make sure i new what I was doing and handed me $28, I was estatic, that's the most money I had seen comin my way in a while. After he had left, the bus finally came after about 30 minutes and I boarded it with a new sense of hope, and a longing desire to sleep, so I did. After I woke up, I had a cute little black toddler staring at me from her stroller, which made me grin as I looked out the window to see downtown Chicago. Before this point in time, I had never been in a city with more than 100,000 people, so this was definitely a new experience for me, because Chicago is HUGE. I made my way around downtown looking for somewhere to eat, until I came upon a jewel osco, and bought some chicken and potato wedges, the first full meal I'd had in days. After I had finished with my meal, I decided to check out the city, I mean, I was already there, so I might as well see the sites and such right? I walked around for a couple of hours, ventured into a few stores, and decided that I should at least TRY and get back to the hotel by nightfall, so I talked to this chick in a Starbucks and asked her how I could get back to where I was staying, and she said to take the train, I was like alright, that's pretty simple. I soon found out that the train only goes to place in the city, not to other cities.. So I ended up next to Wrigley field, a big party spot after the game lets out, and headed to a starbucks which was half a block away from the train station. I went inside, talked to this hot chick for a little bit, and went outside to sit and watch the city. After a little while, I started making my way back downtown, which is actually a long walk through the city and felt a surge of hunger creep over me. I looked around at the nearest place to get some food, but there was only a jewel osco, AND on top of that I had no money. dam. So i decided to be a complete dumass and open up a pack of candy while knowone was looking, go into the bathroom and eat it, hide the wrappers in the trashcan, (I knew I should have flushed them) and then jet. If only it were that simple to steal candy from a store right? About a minute after I left the store, this big black guy came up from behind me and grabbed my arm, along with this smaller dude, and they took me back into the store. The smaller guy talked to me for a little bit and asked me why I did it and what my circumstances were. I told him about how I got stranded by my mag crew and I hadn't eaten much in the past few days and he asked me who I was and if I was 18. He was a heartfelt man and asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I told him I wanted to get back home and go into the navy or become a nurse or something, he liked my honesty and he didn't want to charge me for stealing $4.29 worth of candy, so he didn't press charges. The Chicago police weren't up for being nice to me though, even from the start the cop I talked to was a total dick just because I didn't have an idea, so he kept claiming my name wasn't "Justin Hutchison." It's like really? If I'm not him then why the fuck don't you tell me who I am? And tell me my birthday and social security number, and tell me what my fingerprints look like, then you'll know who I am bitch. So the Chicago PD kept me in an interview room for 4 hours handcuffed to a wall until they decided to fingerprint me and such. They also said they would make me a sandwich, but that never happened.. but after that they put me in a cell and let me go to bed, it was 5 a.m.

That day was so long, it was ridiculous, and what's even worse is I woke up at 7:30, but at least they let me out of jail. Score! I got out of jail, got my shoelaces back, and started talking to this homeless guy that had just gotten out of jail right before I did, and we sorta joined up and started walking the streets. This hobo was a pretty nice guy, not well shaven, but kind enough to get money from people he begged at, haha. We started making our way towards downtown when he asked if he could use my shoelace as a belt and I said sure, I mean we are kinda stuck walkin around together, what could go wrong? Well there is one thing that could go wrong.. he could totally walk off with my shoelace while i'm sitting outside of a McDonald’s talking to some people, and that's exactly what happened, but I wasn't distraught it was just a shoelace after all. After this odd happening I started off towards the nearest train station so I could try and find my way back to my hotel.. again. A few hours went by with no luck talking to people about the best way to get out of the city by bus or train, until I ran into this nice lady at an orange line train station who pointed me in the right direction. As well, she gave me a free pass to ride the train and the bus, but only for 2 rides, which was definitely enough to get me where I was headed. The ride back was pretty easy, I had to ride the orange line to Clark, get off there and then catch the blue line to forest park, and then ride the bus somewhere close to my hotel. The only problem was that my hotel was still 20 miles away from where the bus dropped me off at --so I had to walk some more, OH BOY.. I actually didn't have to walk anywhere at all, because about a minute after I got off the bus, I saw Jen and Megan, and they told me that we were staying at the Holiday Inn. I was so relieved I had found Mag Crew, because if I would have started walking back to the hotel we were staying at before, I never would have found them ever again, and that would have been a tragedy. I talked to them about what happened and they kept asking me where my luggage was, and I told them that I never jumped, I got left on the Illinois/Indiana border and I pretty much walked back. After that, I went and stemmed at this gas station until I caught heat, then I went to this mall across the street until these cops showed up looking for people who were selling magazines, we played it cool and told the 5-0 we weren’t selling magazines and they left us alone. When 9:30 came around we started back towards the hotel, but there were 2 cops there, a regular cruiser and an undercover, so we snuck inside. I came back out to talk to Kim who was in a towel because she had just gotten out of the hot tub, when the undercover cop talked to me and asked me if I was the kid who just got off the bus. I said yeah, and asked why, he said he was just making sure I was alright, I said yeah and he left.

I went across the parking lot and headed towards Mcdonalds until I heard someone shouting my name and I found out it was Joey and he asked where I had been, so I told him what was up, then we went to his room and he got me some cheese sticks, ravioli’s, and spaghetti. After I ate, I saw Chris and he asked me “where have you been McLovin” and he handed me $10 in ones and I headed towards the usual 11 clock meeting, and then I went back to the room and had a 1 on 1 meeting with Billy Jack who told me to use his shpeal because it had been working pretty good for him the past couple of days. When I had his shpeal written down, I ran around looking for people and ended up at the snack machine which was awesome because I was starving, but the best part about it was someone had left a rice krispies laying in there. Score! I went back to my room, munched out and went to bed pretty much, it felt good to finally sleep in a bed after 4 days of walking around Illinois.

I woke up the next morning, took a 5 minute shower, showed up EXACTLY on time to the meeting, did round robins, which is pretty much mag crews way of waking up and getting ready to go to work, and it works surprisingly well. After that, we went through roll call and I got put in the red van with james as our car handler, and it was back to selling magazines, right after we stopped at Wendy’s for some food. So we finally got out on T in Yorktown after eating at Wendy’s, and I started on the right side of the road trying to slap Jones’s and I almost had this one chick for humpty dumpty but I think the price scared her away.. She had a hot daughter though for sure, haha. I saw this cop drive by and my heart sunk below the Earth, but I didn’t really care because I was “doing my job” and I kept knocking doors until he parked in front of the house I was at and started talking to me. He was pretty nice, he believed that was name was Justin and even though 2 more cops came to “assist” him, it was easy to tell from the start that I wasn’t going to be in much trouble, if any at all. The cops ended up telling me that a “missing person” report had been filed for me out of Chicago and I couldn’t think of anyone who would have filed it except for maybe my grandparents, so I gave them my grandma’s number and they called her and she had in fact filed the report. After finding out where they were at, (which was about 3 hours away) they took me to the Yorktown police station where I layed around and slept on this chair for a couple of hours until this other cop told me to sit up. But by that time, my grandparents were in town and 15 minutes or so after that, they had arrived to come get me. After a little bit of talking, a lot of eating, and even more sleeping, we arrived back in Arkansas at my grandparents house at about 2 a.m. and I fell asleep in a familiar bed.

Yeah, so that’s the end of my Mag Crew Adventure. I was gone for a total of about 3 weeks and 5 days, so not exactly a month, but DEFINITELY not 3 weeks, or half of this stuff would have never happened. A word of advice for anyone who encounters a Mag Crew kid or hears the 35,000 points shpeal and all that… Wish that kid good luck, it’s not an easy job waking up at 8 and walking around from 10-9 in the heat and then having a meeting at 11 and not getting done with it until 12. That’s like working from 9-12, that’s 15 hours a day of nothing but magazines. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed. Peace!

I was on a mag crew for only a week i had gotten a call that my dad had suffered a bad heart attack and the doctors said it wasnt looking good i told my boss and he said go ahead and pack so i did so the next morning the car handler took me to greyhound and i asked what the confermation number is so i could my ticket back home (Boston,MA to Tulsa,OK) and he said their isnt one i was stranded for two weeks in a place where i was terrified in cause im from the country and the big city scares the crap out of me but luckly some lady asked me one day why am i homeless and so i told her and the bad part my family didnt have any money and my dad past away while i was stranded in boston. The company didnt even care anbout my situation and because of them i couldnt have been with my dad when he was on his death bed. Well if this company comes to Oklahoma every single one of the agents will feel my wrath and damage on them Katrina is nothing what i am prepared to do to them if they step foot in Oklahoma. Help me get them for the pain they put me and my family through cause they couldnt pay a lousy $148.20 to get me back to be with my dad