Every year around this time the Girl Scouts of America come out in full force to sell cookies to every sucker who walks by. This tradition has been going strong for many years, but like a lot of traditions, there is something not quite right about Girl Scout cookies.
You may ask, "What could possibly be wrong with Girl Scout cookies?" Well, as an employee for the Bashas' company for the past three years, I have witnessed first hand just exactly what goes on in their hidden world.
There really isn't anything wrong with the girls aside from the fact that they are annoying little kids. The real problem is with the parents of the scouts.
The way the system works is the Girl Scouts of Arizona set up a list with times and dates for each troop to sell their little lard cakes. Then the troops show up at Bashas' and are allowed to sell their cookies during a time slot. Sometimes there are problems with the scheduling and troops get double-booked. It's times like these that I stop and say, "I thought I had a seen it all, but this is something else."
Last year I was privy to one of the most outrageous displays in the history of Thin Mints. As my manager David Gaines recalls, two women upset about the mishap in scheduling confronted each other in front of the store. When the two came face to face, the Samoas hit the fan.
"There are no words to describe the awkwardness that shoots through your body when you witness two grown women break into fisticuffs over the distribution of cookies," Gaines said.
The two women actually got into a shoving match over the whole situation. This isn't an isolated incident either. There isn't a sales period where I don't see some mother scream and curse at someone in charge of our store. This kind of abusive behavior over something as trivial as Girl Scout cookies points in only one direction: obsessive parents.
These parents' problems can be compared to the man who killed a hockey coach after an argument over rough play. While the Girl Scout mothers haven't gone as far as he did, one has to wonder how long it will be before one of them snaps, pounces on someone and starts smacking his or her head against the ground.
With their parents acting like maniacs, how are these girls supposed to peddle their Do-si-dos? It is very important to understand the motivation for these parents. While there is no obvious reason for this kind of behavior, I have a guess: insanity. In order to make a more educated guess I searched the Girl Scouts of Arizona Website (www.girlscoutsaz.org).
The only helpful tidbit I could find was their mission statement: "To create confidence, conviction, courage and compassion in girls." Personally, I think they need to add alliteration to the list, but maybe that's just assumed, given the girls gospel generally gives genuinely good goals. (Guess who was once a girl scout.)
After looking at the list of things they want to turn these girls into, it is obvious that their behavior isn't meeting these goals. The shoving match isn't the greatest example of showing compassion, and it doesn't take much courage to yell at a lowly Bashas' employee.
Perhaps the only thing the parents are teaching is conviction, as in how to get convicted of disorderly conduct.
Christopher Fanning is a journalism sophomore. Reach him at christopher.fanning@asu.edu.
