Ahh, Early March: perhaps most widely remembered as a nation-wide period of mourning, year in and year out.
Feeling depressed around this time of the year, every year, without fail? Yeah. #MeToo.
Most people go throughout life never knowing the reason behind this annual mood swing. If you count yourself amongst that legion, then count your lucky stars, for today I shall enlighten you.
You see, early March is the official end to the 2-month jubilee commonly known as “Girl Scout cookie season.”
After ~60 days of binging on the finest sugary baked goods $4 can buy, should one really expect anything less than to come completely crashing down in a state of withdrawal? I think not.
Anyways, consider that your fun fact, “The-More-You-Know,” nugget of knowledge for the day. On with the real story.
This year I had the opportunity to see this whole experience from a slightly different perspective. Our eldest daughter, “The Elder,” joined the Girl Scouts this year, so we had the joy of helping her push them cookies onto any and every poor addict we could find.
I quickly started to notice a disturbing trend in our new lifestyle:
- Boxes stacked on end in the garage, full of highly coveted goods with a street value of over $3.99/box…
- Constantly asking friends, co-workers, and strangers alike, “Pssst! Hey buddy, I got some of the real good shit if you’re looking to score some…”
- Finding yourself making cash transactions that at least feel shady-as-hell, on multiple occasions…
It didn’t take me too long for the thought to cross my mind: “Oh, crap, am I a dealer?”
I told myself that as long as I let the Elder do at least 40% of the legwork, then a minor’s significant involvement and instigation in the project would absolve me of all immorality in the eyes of society. At least that’s how I got to sleep at night.
And despite being quite the youngster, she actually pulled her weight in our new business enterprise. Being too smart to go door-to-door like your average chump, she had the grand idea to have a “drive-thru cookie stand” out by the entrance of our neighborhood.
Without going into too many details, this was a ----- good idea, in part due to the strategic location she had selected that included high car and foot traffic. Additionally, the spot featured a long row of rarely-used parallel parking spots, forming the convenient drive-through lane where “clients” could easily pull out of traffic and make the deal without even getting out of their cars. Brilliant!
Now, the key to any successful young business–legitimate or otherwise–is advertising. Conveniently, our neighborhood has an email listserv (remember, those?) to which probably 2/3 of the local population subscribes. The Boss Lady decided to actually put this to good use for once, instead of its intended purpose of bickering over whether or not one of the residents was racist for complaining to the listserv about the volume of the Latino music lightly emanating from the construction site of our new neighborhood apartments. It sure did make for some good entertainment though…but I digress.
The day before our first Drive Thru Cookie Stand, the Boss Lady blasted the neighbors with an email advertising our goods. We ended up unloading 40-50 boxes from our inventory in under 2 hours–definitely better than trying to move that much product door-to-door. In fact, that was so successful that we decided to do it again 2 weeks later.
Only this time it was my turn to help her run the stand.1Famous last words…
Well, actually, the real reason why I pushed the idea of doing it again was because we had inadvertently bought a $15 set of fancy-ass markers to make the signs for the stand, and I was pretty adamant about getting our money’s worth out of all that capital we had sunk into the business overhead. But, again, I digress.
Anyways, the Boss Lady had pretty strongly lobbied for us running the stand from 12-2 p.m. because she wanted, and I quote:
…to catch the after-church crowd–you know–those mini-vans full of kids going nuts after being cooped up in Sunday School and church for the last 2 hours against their free will.
A woman with some solid business acumen
The parents will be desperate for any way to get them to shut the ----- up. Then BOOM! Our cookie stand magically appears and saves the day!
Well, The Elder and I were running behind this tight schedule that the Boss Lady had kindly set for us, so come 11:50 that morning, we were shoveling pasta down our throats while haphazardly throwing our supplies in the SUV before speeding off to “our corner.”2As in, the corner where one would regularly sell drugs, turn tricks, etc.
We got set up in time, and the business started to trickle in. Now, previously, we had waaaaay too many Peanut Butter Patties (aka PBPs, aka Tagalongs) because it was the favorite of one of us two parents–not saying which one, though–and that affinity had instinctively been extrapolated to the general population. In other words, I ordered too many boxes of the wrong ----- cookie.
So I was pretty eager to push those on our customers.
About 30 minutes in, The Elder asked me if I had remembered to pack a snack for her. Of course, in the rush to get out the door, I had completely overlooked such a key parenting detail.
But, being the problem solver that you know and love, I realized that if I considered the 4 extra dollars in my wallet to be a “problem,” I could kill three birds with one stone and feed my hungry child , lighten my wallet, and remove a potentially unsold box of PBPs from the inventory, all in one fell swoop.
Careful to maintain all fiduciary integrity, I put my $4 in the money envelope, and we proceeded to split one of the three rows of cookies between the two of us. Problems, solved!
Another 45 minutes or so of solid business passes, and to my delight, the PBPs are actually selling pretty well. Around that time, the Elder asked if she could have some more cookies. I told her I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to take another quick hit from our paid-for box.
She started rummaging through the box of non-cookie supplies underneath our table where we had stashed our box. It kinda surprised me when she was underneath there for over a minute, given that there was almost nothing else in that box.
I ducked under the table and began to help her look for it. Panic slowly started to wash over me as I started to realize that, even when I searched through the cardboard box full of our spare PBP inventory, I couldn’t find one that was already opened.
Ah, poop. We had just sold a partially pillaged box of PBPs to a paying customer.
It may sound silly, but my lizard brain was totally awash with the chemicals of embarrassment…and maybe just a little bit of fear. For some of these people, this would be the only chance all year that they would get to enjoy their favorite Girl Scout treat. And here we where, effectively robbing them of 33.3% of their annual happiness.
Just imagine if you were a “Christmas crackhead.” You know, people who somehow have enough executive function to limit their enjoyment of crack-cocaine to once a year as a yuletide treat.3TOTALLY ----- KIDDING. These people don’t exist. Addiction is not a matter of being “strong-willed.” That is possible one of the stupidest and most dangerous ideas out there. Folks, that is simply not how brain biochemistry works. Educate yourself before you end up losing someone you know and love because of this ill-informed dumbassery. You wouldn’t be too happy if you opened up your Christ-blessed dimebag4I think that dimebags are the unit of marijuana distribution, not crack, but I have to at least pretend I don’t know too much about the drug trade. of crack, only to find it’s actually just a 6.66-cent-bag, would you? Didn’t think so. You would probably grab your gun and go hunt down who ever screwed you over.
Now, since these were primarily semi-anonymous cash transactions, we had no way of tracking down the aggrieved party and rectifying the situation with a pristine box of PBPs.
The best I could hope for was that whoever they were, wherever they were, they were getting and reading the neighborhood emails. So I furiously tapped out a neighborhood-wide apology from my phone, begging for any information into the identity of the recipient of our bone-headed ----- up so we could set things right. I pride myself in being a provider of award-winning customer service5So much so that it actually appears on my resume. and wasn’t about to let 5 cookies be the death of my hard-earned reputation.
Alas, days passed, and not a single brave soul responded to my email.
So that was just wonderful. Not only had we screwed over a customer, but now my extremely high level of competency was on display for more or less the whole neighborhood for no good reason. Doh! I wanted to die from embarassment.
Eventually I got over it, thanks in part to some pseudo-therapeutic conversations with the Boss Lady. Her opinion on the matter was that either the afflicted customer wasn’t too bothered by it, or most likely, there were multiple members in their household, and they all just assumed it was somebody else in the family that had busted into the package.
True, I could see that being the case…but instead of it being an assume-the-best-in-your-family-members scenario, my ever-optimistic imagination envisioned it being the proverbial “pebble in the shoe” in an otherwise happy marriage.
Five years down the road, I just know that I’m going to find myself subpoenaed as a key witness for some divorce proceedings. The poor couple never will have stood a chance after they independently realize that they couldn’t trust their partner. After all, what kind of person lies about eating a few Girl Scout cookies, and, when caught, isn’t adult enough to own up to their actions.
Instead, they got to blame it on an innocent 6-year-old Girl Scout, for g-o-d’s sake.
And then I’ll get caught in the middle of that because one of them will discover my email somehow persisting for years in their Spam folder.
Yes, they will have uncovered the email that would have absolved both parties of any wrong-doing…had the irreparable damage to their mutual trust not already been done.
It’s a sad tale really. Though I can’t be 100% certain until I actually get that subpoena, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “True story.”
Anyways, as any experienced distributor of a controlled substance will tell you, the point of the story is never, ever, ever-ever-ever ever forget Rule #1 of the industry:
Thou shalt not get high on thy own supply.
The First Commandment of Dealing
It will only end with a soiled sales reputation and the blood of a whole family torn apart on your hands.
Content created on: 11 & 14 March 2020 (Wednesday/Saturday)
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