My mom turned my grandma’s 90th birthday party into a doterra sales pitch

Hijack the party. Bring drinks, and start drinking games. Start the TV to something highly addicting, or better yet make a slideshow as a special gift to your grandma. Rebute this lady's claims and just say, "my costs vitamins are $10, can't beat that price". Order pizza, make your mom answer the door, then pivot the night. I don't know how two women expect to control an entire house of family to listen to them for an hour.

I would be direct with your mother and tell her a party is no place for a sales pitch. If she insists on hijacking your grandmothers party, perhaps at that point you can offer another activity in another part of the house so that not everyone is obligated to stay. It’s your grandmothers special day, I wouldn’t let what your mom is doing cause you to miss out on the party.

I would totally print up a paper debunking essential oil claims with doterra income disclosure statement at the bottom and pass them out at the "party"

Tell everyone they can get those same essential oils from Now Essential, Plant Therapy and many other non-MLM companies for a fraction of the price and without signing up for any sort of membership or starter pack. Bring some if you can lol, let them smell that orange oil smells a lot better when it's not like $20+ a bottle plus shipping.

Make her watch the Bob's burgers episode about oil pyramid schemes.

Imagine living to be 90 only to have someone tell you about all of the oils and how they can help you live longer and better... if only grandma had essential oils to take back in her youth...

Omg. One of my husbands friends got married and the bride let her sister do a virtual bridal shower, that was basically selling athletic clothing (don't know which mlm this was) but it was cringy af!!! It was during covid, but all of the women invited to this virtual bridal shower were not going to be invited to the wedding as well, which made the whole thing so sales grabby, I was embarrassed for all of them, even though the bride thought this was okay? Gross.

I have a family member that turns any event into a MLM pitch!

OP I’m not too sure if it’s too late but trying to distract from it is the best thing. Just bring food, start irrelevant conversations and maybe pretend to be oblivious it’s a selling pitch and compare it to a product you like. Make sure if anyone vulnerable is there you inform them about the risks of this kind of thing, maybe pull them aside to another room if need be.

If you give them an opening to explain (eg “my vitamins are cheaper so why buy yours” they’ll find a way to counter it by saying something about the fact they’re more expensive because they cure 637 types of autism and helped cure world hunger.

MLM is pure cancer. If you can get a 90 year old person whos lived a life, been around the block many times to sign up for this stuff its no wonder why younger people think its gold.

I can send you access to the "how many people you can recruit before you run out of people" spreadsheet.

Also happy to send you the "average price of doterra items and how many you have to sell if you don't focus on recruiting to actuslly make money" thing I did.

Heck, I could probably make a pretty print for you ....

Do whatever you can to make this about Grandma!!!

I say you bring Jell-O shots and gummies and edibles. Give gramma all the gummies and edibles. Nobody is going to want to try to sell anything to someone high AF.

So I know a lot of people here are just suggesting to dunk on your mom for trying to turn grandmas party in to a cringefest pitch meeting, but you have to put your foot down. That poor 90 year old woman shouldn't be subject to a doTERRA pitch and she ALSO shouldn't be subjected to a passive aggressive war between her daughter and grand daughter.

This is an opportunity for you to approach your mom and hopefully break her out of her stupor. I would be clear and ask her to look introspectively "Do you really think it is appropriate to turn your mother's 90th in to a sales pitch meeting?"

You will be met with resistance to this notion because the goobers will have buttered up your mom with how to deflect the idea that it's not a sales pitch but a little hand holding down the rabbit hole of ideas should show that's a lie.

If your mom refuses to see reason you can drop the oiliest line of all "nobody agrees with you and we don't want this and we won't allow this." If you were my family member and said the party was going to be hijacked by doTERRA I would tell that person to their face to be ashamed and that I would be a completely disruptive force during the pitch.

But I hope your mom can realize that the line needs to be drawn somewhere and that what she's thinking is inappropriate.

Let us know how it goes!

I can’t imagine how hurtful that will be for grandma 💔

Oh God I hate doTERRA. Especially when they hold that stupid ass conference every year in downtown Salt Lake City.

Talk about how grata young living oils are instead. The rivalry will enrage her

Grandma needs a stripper at her party

That’s how you deal with it

I find it really frigging upsetting that your mom is using your grandmother’s birthday to sell shit, no offense. I have a relative who is all about the oils too and I swear, it is a cult

Go to Whole Foods and buy a bunch of essential oils to just give to people

Thanks, I hate it.

Shovel your mom’s sh*tty products out the door, brightly saying “a birthday party is not the time for a pyramid scheme schill, let’s move your stuff outside before everyone gets embarrassed. Thanks guys!!”

I once had a relative tried to pitch me a life insurance on my cousin's party.

OH MY GOD RUN! this happened at my work a while back. They all still have the essential oils but at least they’ve shut the fuck up about it. Oil people are insufferable.

INFO: Is your grandmother her mother?

Buy like 40 air fresheners and hide them everywhere. Bones points for sprays and plug ins. Good luck selling scented oils when it’s painful to breathe - happy birthday grandma!

If you can't get your mother to back down, I would definitely contact family members to set up an alternate party and make sure grandma is good with this. Tell everyone they can go to the sales pitch "party" your mother is hosting, or they can come to a real party with grandma, food, games, and entertainment. 100% everyone will want to come to the fun party.

I went to college for massage therapy. Legit had the dean of the college take 2 hours of class time to do a sales pitch . Look back at it know it was a total abuse of power

“Hand massage” with essential oils would scare me. What oils? Will they be diluted properly with carrier oils?

Hire a stripper

What the fuck is with these people? This is insane.

$250 for rose essential oil? I bought some from Amazon for like $6.

Book entertainment or a restaurant table for 1hr after party starts

Don't go, tell your family not to go either. Enabling these people is the worst thing people can do. They need as many reality checks as they can get. Also bait and switch on your grandma's 90th? That's just plain icky.

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How did she only get into them a year ago? Where has she been?

Definitely make sure everyone knows what she's trying to do so everyone can ignore her and the lady and have an actual party for your grandmother.

I'd call the "friend" a scammer to her face in front of everyone and tell her that she might have tricked our mom but she sure af won't be tricking anyone else.

Over here in my country, the government sponsors certain activities for SMEs as part of Employee Engagement (This also includes, corporate check-ups, fitness programs, etcetc) So we opted for one that was about learning how to destress as we have feedback from our Engagement survey that employees were, suprisesuprise, stress. So anyway, it turned out to be how using oil can help with stress. I didn't realise Doterra was a MLM till my colleague pointed it out. Just suprised, that it was in activity recommended by a government owned body.

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I use essential oils (various store brand or drugstore brands) regularly and I have to admit, Doterra do have good quality oils and more variety. If only they weren't so expensive. I did end up purchasing a starter pack of those mini oils and allowed the seller to use my account for other purchases (since I didn't purchase anymore after...well I did but only cause my boss then loved Doterra Oil and I had to purchase on her behalf).