The Great Girl Scout Cookie Mystery

[Laine]

Ya know what has become quite a mystery to me over the last five years? Girl Scout cookies--more specifically, why people order them and then refuse to pay for them? Over the last five years the kid unit has been with the Girl Scout organization, we have steadily decreased the number of people we ask to order cookies each year. And each year, there are new folks to add to the list of 'Those We Won't Ask Next Year Because They Didn't Pay This Year." It's strange to me!

One thing I think might contribute to this trend is that maybe they don't know that once I pick those cookies up, I have to PAY FOR THEM! I can't send them back and say 'oh, sorry, Sally changed her mind. Didn't want them afterall."..nope, once I sign that I picked them up, I am responsible for paying for them. We got stuck with over 30 boxes this year. Our council sells them for $3/box. I'll let you do the math. And the sad part is that the two people who left me hanging kept scheduling to get them delivered or meet to pick them up and something always got in the way, so those cookies never made it to a last resort cookie booth. My family got stuck with them. So what did we do with them? Lucky us--we live near a Marine Corps base. Hubby ended up taking them to the Wounded Warrier Barracks yesterday. So maybe it wasn't such a bad thing afterall. I hope the cookies made the guys smile a little. God love 'em, they need all the smiling they can get!! Managing to turn a not good thing into a great thing makes the frustration a little easier to take, but adding people to my "No Sale" list is never fun.
I just hope they had really good reasons, and not that I expect to ever know what they are--being personal and all--but I just don't like being jerked around. Oh well, chalk it up to lessons learned.

[Patti McCoy Jacob]

Oh Laine, you hit upon a topic near and dear to my heart. I have four daughters, and three of them have gone through the cookie thing. Worse, I was the Cookie Mom, so every parent who messed up on orders, I had to pay the price... literally! My youngest daughter is only three. I'm thinking we'll skip the whole Girl Scout thing with her because I can't afford to have her join since I buy all the cookies she is required to sell!