When you're firmly ensconced in the pink bubble, common sense flees, and poor choices reign supreme. You engage in behavior that's, well, not you. At all levels, from new consultant to *successful* super-supreme director, you do things and make decisions that, outside of your Mary Kay life, you would run screaming from. Many of these actions are more embarrassing than harmful, like warm chattering, cold calling, stalking your friends and neighbors, wearing tiaras and driving a pink paper plate while doing the locomotion around a crowded hotel conference room...

But, the Mary Kay environment and culture also leads us to make very RISKY decisions. I think you encounter this some at a consultant level (extra product ordering and the like), but as you climb the MK ladder, the risky behavior increases and at the DIQ/director level, it can be downright dangerous. We'll set aside unscrupulous behavior for now, such as credit card fraud, signing up consultants w/out their knowledge and the like. I mean here risky behavior towards ourselves. Some examples are:

Persisting in the MK rat race to the point of hurting your health - knowing that it's causing psychological problems (depression), raised blood pressure, migraines, or worse.
Driving to dangerous neighborhoods to hold appts with people you do not know.
Purchasing thousands of dollars in product so that you don't fall out of DIQ/lose your car/make the director trip/etc. (i.e. had a friend who placed a $3000 order to stay in DIQ, despite having no customer base and thousands of whlsl product already).
Divorcing your husband because he is "unsupportive" of your career.
Opening credit cards behind your husband's back and ruining both of your credit ratings.
Lying to family and friends about different things.

For me, the riskiest thing I did was place a $3,600 whlsl order on my credit card for a new consultant in my unit, whom I did not know. She signed up, I did the inventory talk with her, she wanted to do a $3,600 order and applied for a loan, which she got. I printed the order, gave it to her, and she supposedly sent it to the company overnight with the money order. The company never received it, and the shipping company couldn't find it. She said, "I'll just place a $600 order instead and cancel the money order. I don't think I need all that product anyway and my friends are waiting on their orders." In my MK frenzy to "find a way, make a way," I told her, no, that she should cancel the money order, she could place the order (totalling around $4500) on my credit card, and get a new money order payable to me. The company knew about this (they don't have a policy that I'm aware of that says you can't do this), my Sr knew about this, and they both said it was okay to do. In the end, she did get me a personal check - after about 2 months. I was sick to my stomach until I had that money. I was already in enough debt on my own through MK - I didn't need to add that to it.

I didn't realize until leaving MK what a horrible choice that was. The woman turned out to be the sort to make up stories to get recognition, and placed almost no orders after that. Even if she was "Jane Upstanding", that was ridiculously risky of me and still makes me ill to think I did it. Prior to and now after MK, I would NEVER make that decision. Until now, my husband, one MK customer service woman, and my Sr are all that knew about that decision.

The culture of MK encourages this kind of behavior, and is just one more way it hurts all the women in MK. What kinds of risky decisions did you make to further your MK career and pursue the dream that wasn't there?

The riskiest thing I consider myself doing in Mary Kay was Mary Kay.

Although it was my choice, my director and a "so-called and no-longer" friend of mine hounded me into getting $3000 worth of inventory b/c they said it would help me in the long run. I knew in the back of my mind that I really couldn't do it but, hey, if it is going to benefit me then I'll put it on my credit card. After I gave the go ahead, I regretted it.

This is where I started to lie. Within the same day I tried to think of a story that could make them cancel the order and return the money to my credit card. I called up my director and told her the story and she said she would try to contact corporate. She called me back and said that it was too late. Months after I tried to sell as much as I could and then got out of it.