haha, I never told anyone this because of the hatred for GNC and I would chime in with the "Fuck GNC" comments also, but I worked there for 2 years. Their shit is way overpriced, and most of their sales reps don't know a lot about the products but look at it from their point of view. You can make a shitload of money at GNC if you know how to bullshit people. When I worked there, I knew what products weren't shitty and which ones were way overpriced, but GNC is offering me 30cents for each tub of protein A that I sell, and $3.50 for each tub of protein B I sell, so I pushed all the stuff that had high commission rates. They mail out a list each month telling the employess what products have the highest commission rates, and that's what I based my sales on. It's shitty to say that, and I know it was shitty to do, but anyone who says they don't mind shaving $5 an hour off their paycheck simply because they want to be honest is totally full of bullshit.
90% of the people who came into my store were totally clueless as well as filthy rich, so I milked the shit out of them, telling them everything they wanted to hear, and after about 6-10 minutes of talking to them, I'd make anywhere from $3-$10 in commission off of the products they purchased on top of my hourly wage. I was paid $6 an hour, but I made, on average, $10-$12, but during gold card week, you can easily average anywhere from $15-$25 an hour, but it's all about having good people skills, being able to read people and tell them exactly what they want to hear. If you sit in the corner picking your nose, or tell every customer that Muscletech is overpriced as fuck, you won't make any money because Muscletech offers the highest commission rates without a doubt, and I refused to pay for anything they sold, but I pushed the fuck out of their products because I made a lot of money off them, and every 6 months or so they'd send all the employees in my store a gym bag with 4 boxes of protein bars, a 2lb. tub of protein powder and 210 caps of Hydroxycut, all because I knew how to sell. You can't beat that.
But the best part, without a doubt, is if you get a cool manager, they let you keep all the returns and recalls, so after about a year of working there, your house looks like a GNC store. I without a doubt agree with everyone that their shit is overpriced, and people say their sales staff don't know shit (a good number of them dont), but we weren't trained on what products did what and at the best price, we were told "Sell a bottle of this and we give you 20 cents, sell a bottle of that and we give you $5" so naturally we wanted more money. I was one of about 3 other employees I knew from my area (from time to time we would rotate shifts at stores depending on what was selling) that knew what all that stuff in there did, and I knew exactly what was complete crap, like that On-Cycle, Off-Cycle bullshit. That stuff is total crap, but you get $7 for selling ONE bottle.
I hear what you're saying about not wanting to feed people bullshit, but you'll say "fuck that" to that idea real quick. During my first 2 weeks, I worked with a guy who I thought sucked because he pushed crappy products, and I was honest with my customers. Well my paycheck was for $150 and his for $260 and we worked the same number of hours. He made over $100 more than me simply because he didn't mind bullshitting people. I'm sure people will say this is a shitty way to do business, becuase it is, but anyone in my situation would have done the same thing. When you realize that you can easily double your pay rate, you'll stop caring. I've never made as much money in any other job than I did at GNC.