Last year, she started her door-to-door selling on the second day, but someone had gotten to our street first. It was an uphill battle, what with the predawn raid on the street, and hordes of Scouts at church, some of them in councils who'd forgone ordering for point of purchase sales. Compare: one child with order form in hand with one waving a box of Samoas under your nose and see who has the upper hand. This cookie business can get nasty.
Without the benefit of parents working in offices, she had to work for every sale, but she finally compiled a decent list. We ordered, they came in, we sorted and went to get the order form to start delivering.
The order form. You know, the one that had been at my elbow a week before, that I'd left prominently in the way on the desk so that it wouldn't get lost. That order form.
We turned the house upside down, even cleaned the office, and came to the agonizing conclusion that the order form was indeed gone, and there were about a hundred boxes of ownerless cookies in my dining room.
It turned into point-of-purchase sales after all. "Hi, did we sell you any cookies? No, I don't remember either. Want some?" Halfway through the process, a couple of people contacted us wondering about their order, and I ended up having to order more to get them what I'd already resold. One night at church, I set down a sack containing Thin Mints and Samoas at church at a dinner and when I went to retrieve it, all that was left were empty boxes. In retrospect, I should have set it down somewhere other than the dessert table. And still we ended up with extra boxes. I took cookies to gatherings, improvised desserts using them as pie crusts, you name it. I spent twice what we normally spend on cookies. I'm still recovering.
So this week, I'll have my last sleeve of Thin Mints, the ones I always freeze and save for the new year, just before the cookies come out. And then, I'll be stalking a Girl Scout.
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