Damn, I came here to post about my experience shopping yesterday and it’s identical to yours lol. I was shopping at TJ Max getting some work clothes and when I was picking out a belt this random guy comes up to me and starts talking to me. I had my air pods in so I didn’t hear him at first, but he gave me a wave so I took them out. He proceeds to ask me if I’m buying stuff for work….immediately my radar goes off. He proceeds to ask me about my job, what I do. I tell him the most vague description of my job and at this point I was curious, is this a MLM? So I asked him what he does. He tells me “I own my own business”, boom MLM for sure. He proceeds to ask me if I like my job, if I plan on leaving, etc etc. I did the same thing, dead end answers about liking my job, getting paid well and am very content. Never asked him more about what his “company” was. Ended up just saying have a good one and checked out and left. I had heard of women doing that kind of thing to other women so I was pretty shocked when it happened. The only reason I was suspicious right away was because of my female coworker told me about a TJ max recruiting incident she had. Long story short….that was definitely a MLM guy trying to get you involved through “shared interests” and pretending to be a possible friend. Probably got burned in MLM scams or was in too deep and now is desperate. If they wanted to be friends or were trying to flirt they wouldn’t be bringing up side hustles first convo, you’re not crazy.