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Should Girl Scouts be restricted to door-to-door sales?

Posted March 19 2009 by Jackie Morgan MacDougall

Every year around this time, countless families just about to sit down to dinner hear the sound of an unexpected guest at the door - ding dong. Mom always has to stop what she's doing (because no one else in the house seems to have heard it) and head down the hall to investigate. One look out the window, and she's trapped -- the little girl from the house just up the street, sash and beanie poised perfectly for selling, spots her through the curtains and waits for the door to crack open so she can pounce.

"Want to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"

No.
Well, yes.
I shouldn't.
But it's for a good cause.
Fine, I'll take 8 boxes.

If you think that kid's a pusher... this year, one 8-year-old took her Girl Scout cookie sales so seriously, she turned to YouTube with her "Buy cookies! And they're yummy!" message in order to make the sale. Brilliant, don't you think? Within two weeks, 700 orders came in.

But the Girl Scout organization wasn't so impressed, and ordered her to take her cute little cookie pitch down. When Newsweek inquired about this, they were directed to the Scouts' Website's FAQ section, which clearly states, "Our existing National Girl Scout policy prohibits the sale of Girl Scout Cookies® or any other Girl Scout approved product on the Internet. The safety of our girls is always our chief concern. Girl Scout Cookie Activities are designed to be face-to-face learning experiences for girls. In an online setting, there is no guarantee that the seller is indeed a girl member of Girl Scouts."

Wait... Are you kidding me?

I can't imagine how it's safer for young girls to go door to door rather than take orders online and deliver them, with supervision of course. But "there's no guarantee the seller is a member?" I have a feeling that my 43-year-old co-worker who traipsed around the office delivering box after box of Tagalongs and Thin Mints was not, in fact, a member of the troop. And what about those crazy moms in front of the grocery store, guilting people into slapping down a few bucks for a box of cookies while their tween girls sit next to them talking about 'who's cute' and 'who's totally not'? They maxed out of the Girl Scout age decades ago. Where's the line between a parent helping create an online presence or stepping over professional boundaries by shoving them down our face in the office break room?

Besides, if you think I'm a sucker under a little pressure at the door, you should see how many cookies I'd buy late at night when my sweet tooth starts throbbing and the closest thing to chocolate in my house is last year's leftover Halloween candy.

But maybe the Girl Scouts actually has its cookie customers' best interest in mind. Psychiatrist Dr. Nancy Tice says shopping online in this economy can be a bad idea for those with no self-control. "There is a huge convenience factor shopping online, and it is often hard to see it as real because you don't touch goods and you don't actually pay in a direct way that has the same feeling of regular shopping."  While millions are trying to keep spending to a minimum, it's tough to pass up online sales - which get better the more the economy fails. Dr. Tice says, "It can be a habit for people to shop online, and someone with poor impulse control would really have a problem because it's just so easy."

I guess we better get used to intrusive little Girl Scouts - at least for another year.

Jackie Morgan MacDougall, on the never-ending quest for balance, enjoys life in Los Angeles with her husband, Jeff, and their three small kids.

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