Thursday, January 17, 2008

Socked It to Me...

I punched myself tonight. I was getting in the car to go pick up our shitty Indian food take-out order, and as I was pulling the seatbelt across my chest, my hand slipped and, close-fisted, I punched myself in the jaw. Really fucking hard. So hard I saw stars. It was actually the first fight I've been in since I traded punches with Mike Bastone in jr. high school. Actually, he punched me, I tried to punch back but missed and fell off the bleachers. Tonight, however, was the first fight I've ever actually won. Sort of. And you should see the other guy.

So, Miss O is now a Brownie. I know, I'm not necessarily thrilled about it, but her friends are in it and she wanted to do it, so fuck it. They don't wear the whole uniform -- just the sash. The whole thing has this quasi-military vibe to it, though, and it makes me a little uneasy, but what are you gonna do? Anywhich, they're getting ready to sell Girl Scout cookies. Which is fine, 'cuz I can suck down about 50 sleeves of those fucking Thin Mints in an afternoon. But the whole process, so far, has been confusing as shit. We had to fill out this order form thing and then decide how many boxes of each kind she was going to sell. How the fuck do I know how many she's gonna sell?! What am I, a goddamn psychic?!

So we picked out 25 boxes total: 7 boxes of Tagalongs, 7 boxes of those dusty Trefoil shortbread things that the Old Lady likes, 10 boxes of the Thin Mints, and 1 box of the coconut/caramel shitballs called Samoas, cuz' dammit, I like those fuckers. We figured we'd keep a few boxes and then sell the rest to neighbors and shit. Now, at $3.50 a box, I'm out $87.50 already, and there ain't nary a fucking cookie coursing through my colon yet. Fucking shysters, these Brownies.

Then we get another form tonight that's the kind you use when you go door-to-door, where you write down peoples' names and addresses and shit and collect the money. So what, she's supposed to go door-to-door and take orders and then say, "Oh sorry, I don't have any of those. Nope none of those either. Ooh, fresh out of those." It's gonna be like that fucking Monty Python "Cheese Shop" skit.

Now, maybe I'm a dipshit, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Why not go around the neighborhood taking orders FIRST, then send the fucking orders into Brownie Central, have them fill the orders, send us the cookies and then we'll go drop the fuckers off. But no... we have to guess what we're gonna sell first, send in the money, go see what people really want but tell them they can only get what we ordered, then wait for the cookies to fucking show up, then go hand out the cookies no one wanted, and try to make our money back.

Are the actual Brownies running the head office over there, 'cuz this brilliant marketing scheme sure the fuck sounds like it was thought up by a bunch of six year olds. But that's the military for ya. I'm probably gonna end up eating the $87.50, loading all the cookies into the basement and stuffing my face-hole with those fuckers over some long hazy, trans-fat-induced bulimic binge-jamboree.

But as long as Miss O gets her little iron-on cookie patch for her fascist soldier-sash, my future adult-onset Diabetes Mellitus will be well worth it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not sure if your brownies get to do "site sales"...but my troop will be selling cookies at the local senior apartment complex and they senior citizens literally will knock each other out of the way for the cookies. The troop has to have that special PTSD eye therapy to undo the damage afterwards. (yes, I'm a leader AND cookie manager.... how did I get here? is this really my beautiful life?)

Russ said...

Those samoas are awesome! I always get a box from the girls next door.

Actually, that has been one of the good things about being a sahd, no clients to push their kids' school/activity money raising attempts on me.

ps what is with the cub scouts selling popcorn? I can pop a container in two or three minutes, why would I buy it from them?

crabbydad said...

Sarah, as a troop leader, I demand that you get to the bottom of this cookie pre-order fiasco!

And Russ, yeah, what the shit?! I got suckered into buying a huge tin of "caramel corn," that ended up being low sugar, or something -- tasted like low-sugar ass. I ended up dumping the corn and keeping the tin to puke in.

Anonymous said...

The cookie preorder sounds like a scam. We do it the old fashioned way... dress the kids up, shove them out the door and make them sell. Oh wait.. I mean the parents email all the friends and relatives and coworkers and collect the orders and then show up at my house to pick up the cookies. I'm not sure what the girls actually do.

Anonymous said...

Man, when I was a Brownie, we did it exactly the crabtastic way described. Wandered around the neighborhood, got the locals to sign up for boxes, ordered them from cookie central, delivered them and collected the cash.

I inevitably sold to some teenage kid who ordered 12 boxes and didn't tell their folks about it, so collection was always a little awkward.