Wal-Mart Targets the Girl Scouts! (mild)

[Dangerosa]

@kjbrasda

Oh yes, this year the Girl Scouts are selling magazines too, and I think it was nuts or brittle and other gifty junk in the packet, I didn’t actually look at it too close.
In fact, our leaders were told that each troop was required to sell this extra overpriced fundraising stuff in order to even have permission to do their own fundraising (such as pancake breakfasts, spaghetti suppers, carwashes, bakesales ect.) Not being a leader myself, I don’t have all the details.

We can still do other fundraising in our council if you don’t sell the crap. Which we didn’t. We only fundraise via cookies and if you expect to make less than $100, you don’t need to get permission from council to fundraise at all.

We just sell cookies and we don’t even make a big deal about that. No cookie booths. Each girl sold around 100 boxes, enough to get them a weekend at camp. 100 boxes of girl scout cookies pretty much sell themselves (get a few GS cookie addicts and its easy).

If the girls continue past elementary school (into cadets) we might get a little more serious about fundraising so they can do more stuff. For now, they are happy to come over in my basement and do crafts.

[Mama_Zappa]

@Una_Persson

Sure the cookies taste great now, but what happens when they’re all gone in a single day? You buy more, and more, and then loot your 401k for more, and stay home from work to eat more cookies, and eventually you end up housebound and 900 pounds, washing yourself with a rag on a stick and spending your stimulus checks on Thin Mint cookies and screaming for more “bailout” so you can buy more cookies. Eventually you trade one of your corneas for a few assault rifles and you head off on your Rascal Scooter to the Girl Scouts headquarters to get more cookies.

Sadly, 1) thanks to a generous donation from the estate of Una, the local Girl Scout troop has been attending Rifle Camp all summer long and you walked in on “shoot what ya brung” day, and 2) missing one cornea, your depth perception is fucked and you can’t hit the broad side of a barn. So then come the Loud Noises, and the sirens, and the yellow tape, and a week later you’re in a cardboard coffin being lowered into a yawning grave with a single Thin Mint cookie resting on your tongue to pay Charon to ferry your soul to Hades.

I don’t want to judge you, but is that how you want to live your life?

Well, yes. Who wouldn’t?

[Contrapuntal]

@BigT

You are being quite dense.

No U.

Of course they are just targeting the customers. But that in turn effectively targets the organization itself.

Then every company that sells similar products is targeting other company that sells similar products. It’s a silly distinction.

You talk about them needing to reduce their prices: that’s exactly the problem. They do that, they make less money.

Jeeze Louise! It’s called capitalism. Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Why don’t they just sell boxes for $1 million each? Sell one box and shut down for the year.

Of course other places have sold similar products. But they didn’t allow Girl Scouts to set up a booth, either. They didn’t cheat the organization by making them think they could rely on sales from people entering what is often the most popular spot in a town, and then pull the rug out from under them (which is bad enough but not worthy of ire.) and then start competing with them (which is).

They made them think what now? It’s cheating to give something away for free and then stop doing it? You do understand how the market system works, right?

The thing I’m trying to get across about capitalism is that it does not mean that you must solely look out for your own interests. And that’s precisely what Walmart is doing, at the expense of Girl Scouts. They can’t argue that they need to sell them (unlike Girl Scouts). They can’t claim ignorance when they kick people out. They know that, if they make any money at all, it will take away from them. And they’ve decided this is perfectly okay.

By your account, any money they make on any product is taking money away from anyone else who sells that product. By the same token, you doing your job is preventing another person from doing that job, and thereby taking money out of his pocket and snatching food from his babies’ mouths. You heartless bastard.

If the Girl Scouts want to enter the marketplace they need to play by the rules.

That’s what we are decrying. It’s perfectly fine for a profit-based organization to act like this with another profit-based organization. Walmart starts making their own Big Macs and wants to kick McDonald’s out? Fine. But it’s another story when it’s an organization that actually focuses on doing good for the community. Because then the goal winds up decreasing that good.

So they are not making a profit on the cookies? They need to stop selling them then,

[Kiros]

@Una_Persson

Sure the cookies taste great now, but what happens when they’re all gone in a single day? You buy more, and more, and then loot your 401k for more, and stay home from work to eat more cookies, and eventually you end up housebound and 900 pounds, washing yourself with a rag on a stick and spending your stimulus checks on Thin Mint cookies and screaming for more “bailout” so you can buy more cookies. Eventually you trade one of your corneas for a few assault rifles and you head off on your Rascal Scooter to the Girl Scouts headquarters to get more cookies.

Sadly, 1) thanks to a generous donation from the estate of Una, the local Girl Scout troop has been attending Rifle Camp all summer long and you walked in on “shoot what ya brung” day, and 2) missing one cornea, your depth perception is fucked and you can’t hit the broad side of a barn. So then come the Loud Noises, and the sirens, and the yellow tape, and a week later you’re in a cardboard coffin being lowered into a yawning grave with a single Thin Mint cookie resting on your tongue to pay Charon to ferry your soul to Hades.

I don’t want to judge you, but is that how you want to live your life?

I spent almost all of that story eating as many Thin Mints as I want, right? Was there supposed to be a drawback or moral of some sort?

(well played!)

[CrazyCatLady]

@FoieGrasIsEvil

I mean, c’mon people, really? Girl Scout cookies suck? What the fuck is wrong with you? My SIL is an acclaimed pastry chef at arguably the best restaurant in my area and even SHE likes the cookies, even though she can make better, and does.

Spoken like one who has always had the pleasure of living in a Little Brownie council. There are a couple different bakeries that make the cookies, and there’s a pretty notable difference in the quality of the products they turn out. I grew up in a council that sold cookies from the Little Brownie bakeries, then went to college in a non-LB council. I didn’t really think too much about the names being different, and when the cookies weren’t anything like as good as I remembered I thought maybe my tastes had just changed. And then my mom sent me a box from home, and I realized the awful truth.

On some types of cookies the differences aren’t too noticeable–Trefoils and Shortbreads are pretty damn close. But the Thin Mints from the bakeries our council uses are much coarser and the chocolate doesn’t seem as intense, and there are noticeable chunks of mint rather than it being evenly distributed. And don’t even get me started on how insanely inferior the Caramel Delite is to the Samoa–I’d rather skip cookie season altogether than waste a day’s worth of calories on the Caramel Delite.

[Chicagojeff]

@MeanOldLady

Nasty, horrible crack. Unlike most crack, which is delicious.

Bite your tongue meanie… this is coming from (confession) a “cookie daddy” … I took little brat to a local starbucks and we set up shop and she hit every other customer with her very large brown eyes…

  And thin mints are the ish..

[Shot_From_Guns]

@CrazyCatLady

There are a couple different bakeries that make the cookies, and there’s a pretty notable difference in the quality of the products they turn out.

Whoa. That could actually explain a lot.