Dear Snarky – Girl Scout Cookie Mama Drama

Dear Snarky,

One mom in my daughter’s Girl Scout troop is ruining the cookie sale experience for the rest of the girls. This mom owns a very popular, upscale clothing store and every year she has a large table in the center of the store where she has the cookies for sale. This means the mom, not her daughter, sells more at least a 1,500 boxes of cookies!

How is this fair? The girls are supposed to sell the cookies. A couple of us want to demand this mom stop and get the cookie sale back to what it’s supposed to be – girls selling cookies!

What approach do you think we should take? Go to the Girl Scout leader first or just skip that and go straight to that mom?

Signed, Tired of This

Dear Tired,

The approach I think you should take is chilling out. Yes, in a perfect Girl Scout world boxes of Thin Mints would only be sold by lovely cherubs learning entrepreneurial skills who pull wagons piled high with cookies as they go door-to-door to delight their neighbors with their baked confections while blue birds sing. But, that’s a Disney movie not real life.

In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought a box of cookies from an actual Girl Scout. In the past decade all of my cookie buying has been through a parent either at work or social media.

Furthermore, after talking with Girl Scout parents (shout out here to all the Snarky friends who offered their advice on Facebook) here’s the bottom line.

The more cookies a troop sells the more money the troop has to spend on activities. So, the mom selling cookies in her store benefits the entire troop. Sure, her daughter may get a lot of cookie cred and yep the mom could have a booth sale at her store so more girls can be involved and on and on.

But don’t focus on the negative and please don’t make the cookie sale about this mother. Focus instead on your daughter and the additional fun she’ll get to have due to the money the troop, as a whole, has made.

If this advice is hard for you to swallow than may I suggest self medicating by eating a sleeve of the new S’more cookie. I’m told they’re magical. 😉

*If you have a question for Dear Snarky – 21st Century Advice With An Attitude – email me at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com or PM on the Snarky In The Suburbs Facebook page.

6Comments

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1

Jess on February 1, 2017 at 9:26 am
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I agree! It’s really no different than a mother passing around the cookie sheet at work. I remember trying to sell stuff for field trips through my school and it always worked best when done through my mother and her co-workers and so on. As long as the girls are getting the money for their troop, it doesn’t really matter.
2

Melissa on February 1, 2017 at 9:31 am
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So true. Look at the Girl Scout cookie sales as the largest girl led business. Support them when you can.
3

Jessie Powell on February 1, 2017 at 12:34 pm
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See if the Mom will let the whole troop gather in front of the store so the whole troop can participate in the project.
4

Girl Scout Leader on February 1, 2017 at 12:54 pm
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The mom all bent out of shape about another mom selling cookies at her store needs to get over it! Nothing about the cookie sale is fair. Some parents work at huge companies where they can put the order form in the break room and hundreds of people see it. Other girls may have a parent that is a CEO and employees all buy cookies because their bosses daughter is selling them. Another kid may have a grandparent that buys hundreds of boxes and donates them to a nursing home. In my almost 11 years of being invovled in Girl Scouting I’ve seen all three scenarios. Was I supposed to tell each of these parents that this wasn’t fair because some girls didn’t have parents who were CEO’s or worked at large companies or had grandparents with deep pockets? The cookie sale is supposed to be a learning event for the girls and one of things they learn is life is not fair and that you just need to be the best you can be and not worry or whine about how everything would be just perfect if so and so did this or that.
5

CJ on February 1, 2017 at 5:12 pm
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I can feel for the mom who wants it to be about the girl. I know people sell at work, they offer the sheets at meetings but unfortunately that girl might get all the glory. Our troop keeps up with individual sales and ALL the money earned goes in that girl’s account. She will have her badges, her events and end of year trip/adventure paid without learning the tools that the cookie sales were intended to teach.
6

Rhonda M. on February 1, 2017 at 5:52 pm
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What she said! 😂