Girl Scout Cookie Selling

[mylisant]

This is a topic that's come up at work recently. Someone's daughter is a Girl Scout, and the sales sheet sits on the Admin's desk in our department here at work. I had explained my position on Girl Scout Cookie Sales to my co-workers and one of them sent me this article: Girl Scout cookie-pushing ethics at the office. I wrote a response to this

Comments

[dreda]

This makes perfect sense to me.

And also reminds me to look for the little cookie-pushers in the subway tonight. Mmm, Samoas...

[msmemory]

When I was a kid, I could go door to door in my neighborhood and find people (usually moms) at home between the close of school and nightfall. Though I never won any sales prizes either, even so. Now, not so much. I would be happy to order cookies from a Scout in my neighborhood, but I have no idea if there are any. So I get them at baronial meetings through antoniseb's daughter, or at work through one of the lab dudes' kid. Yeah, I generally don't get to meet the Scout face to face, ever, which is a shame.

[dehuman8]

if rowan wants to sell cookies at my office i'm going to have her get in touch with a supervisor to arrange a sales day. (my supervisor will be warned of the call of course. that's called networking!)

[mylisant]

If Rowan wants to sell cookies, I will gladly buy some from her. (this is also networking)

[dehuman8]

:)

[milkgonebad]

After many years of being a girl skunk, I really didn't find the value in going around selling crap. The cookies didn't make the troupe much, the damned magazines did.

I'm all for hard work but selling crap doesn't really teach you much does it? Not a girl scout value anyways imo.

Make me do a car wash any day but screw the selling stuff!

[mylisant]

Well at least you learned that you don't like selling! Not a bad thing to know. ;)

[a_special_b0y]

Selling stuff absolutely does teach you life skills. If you don't have the self confidence to look an adult (read: superior) in the eye and carry on a conversation with them, how will you ever gain the maturity to conduct yourself in a world where you are constantly dealing with superiors

[liamstliam]

I see it differently.

At the places I have worked, people simply let you know that their daughters are selling cookies, or they leave the form out.

I really like Girl Scout cookies and I like supporting Girl Scouts.

I feel as though they are doing a service for me.

(I think there's a difference between leaving the form out and aggressively selling).

I think it's a simple fact that some kids' parents can help them in different ways than others. I think all parents add something outside of parenting.

I think that for my girls, there were both pluses and minuses to having parents as teachers in their school.

[mylisant]

I understand being happy that you can easily and conveniently buy Girl Scout cookies (and thereby support the Girl Scouts) from work. My issue is really that by doing so, parents place an inappropriate emphasis on getting the most sales over the other values like earning your own way, the rewards of hard work etc. that the process *could* be teaching them. One parent, cited in the article, sold about 60% of the total cookies that were credited to her daughter. The Girl Scout organization exacerbates the issue by rewarding girls with prizes based on the number of boxes sold. If the Girl Scouts were Avon, I would understand, but it's about so much more than that and I wish that the cookies sales could be more reflective of those higher values.

[liamstliam]

See, I never related selling cookies with getting rewards.

I mean when the girls were selling them it was, well, we will sell what we can.

I also think there's a big difference between a parent selling 60 boxes and the kid selling 30 -- with the prize as a comb -- and the parent selling 600 and the kid 300 with the goal of a free week at camp or something.