Girl Scout Cookie Selling
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
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Asking for things is a humbling experience, and everyone needs to know how to deal with the positive and the negative outcomes. I hate dealing with "kids" who stare at the floor when running a cash register, for example. Being meek or shy isn't a good thing, but it's another matter entirely when they just don't have the respect for others or themselves to have good social skills. That is precisely what selling things face-to-face teaches. You need to know how to form a coherent sentence, hold eye contact, not fidget with your pocket lint, pay attention to details, speak your piece, and ultimately leave a positive impression of yourself.
The bottom line is that selling things teaches social and financial skills. The matter of the incentives given by the Girl Scouts is just there to give the kids a reason to want to sell (read: indirectly learn life lessons). Really want to separate the men from the boys (er, girls from the women)? Remove the incentives and let the reward of selling the cookies be the benefit to the troop, and more importantly, the life lessons.
Getting back to the original post, the fact that parents help to sell cookies is a non issue. That only beefs up the sales numbers. People will always buy cookies. The Girl Scouts just see this as a huge fund raiser for themselves, with the secondary benefit being the learning process. The kids who are in it solely for the incentives will win the hair comb, but potentially lose out on much more: the intrinsic benefits of personal interaction with adults. Though Suzy may not win the Wii, she'll win at life. If she's lucky, she'll win both.
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