It really felt like being a model during the shoot

The photography looked professional, but in reality they just had me do a few simple poses commonly seen in magazines.

Then someone guided me to talk with Allen about the contract details.

They pretended to be looking for ordinary people for modeling jobs on 104 Job Bank,

to lower your guard. They told you that they had hundreds of online-shopping companies and dozens of magazine print advertisements on hand,

all of which would become your sources of income.

A new product bag was deliberately placed on the chair behind me.

They told me that my next job would be this project and that they would help me shoot advertising copy for the product.

Then they listed the fees for the promotional photos: 7*35*500*3. They listed a bunch of multipliers simply to make your eyes glaze over.

In the end, the cost came to nearly NT$60,000. The contract looked reasonable at first glance,

but in reality it only benefited the company and completely exploited newcomers who came in for interviews.

At the time, I thought I looked fairly good, so I figured the part-time income seemed pretty decent. I could make one or two thousand dollars an hour, and a better project could even pay seven or eight thousand. Even if there was only one job a month, I would eventually be able to recoup the money I invested if I kept at it.

Because of this wishful thinking, I trusted what he said.

Fortunately, my credit card limit was not high enough, so I could only pay half the fee.

That meant I had to go back the next day to pay the remaining half.

When I got home that day, I kept thinking about the situation, because during our conversation he had also mentioned an extra-role job to me.

I also noticed that one clause in the contract said that if the company did not arrange any work within three weeks, it would provide a full refund.

So an extra-role job could count as one of the projects too. But as far as I knew, extra work was time-consuming and not profitable at all.

That immediately jolted me awake from my dream.

As soon as I got home, I thought of a plan. Since I had paid only half the amount, he foolishly assumed that I was easy to talk to and would definitely return the next day.

So I made up an excuse, saying that the bank required me to first reverse the charge from the previous day before it could raise my credit limit, and that I could then charge the full amount in one transaction and pay it in installments.

Sure enough, he completely believed me, thinking that the easy mark was about to be caught and that he could hold a celebration dinner that evening.

I also made up the excuse that after the reversal, I would need another 30 minutes for the credit-limit adjustment before I could charge the next amount.

I took the original contract with me while I had the chance, and got all my money back.