Yes, it's that time of the year again
It's girl scout cookie time. I figured out that this is my 8th year as the cookie chair for Glendale and yet it still surprises me when a new leader asks, what's a service unit (sur vis yoo nit: n. geographical area associated within a girl scout council, sometimes the name of the city, e.g., Glendale Service Unit in Glendale, California, Girl Scouts, Mount Wilson Vista Council). I don't know how to type pronounciation symbols. I know service unit is a foreign concept to the uninitiated, but it's so ingrained in my everyday life that it becomes very annoying to have to spell it out.
So it's girl scout cookie time--how is it that I forgot what it was like to stay up until 2 a.m. trying to make 8 columns of numbers add up correctly. It seemed so de ja vu, and yet I didn't remember that part. We are down to 24 troops, this should be simple as pie and yet, there's always something. This year, there is a form on line that the leaders can download on their computer, type in and the form does the adding for them. Then they can e-mail the form to me, voila, they are done. So easy. EXCEPT THE FORM ADDS IT WRONG. The form will add all the packages of all the different types of cookies and come up with the total number of cases, by dividing by 12. Unfortunately, they must order full cases of each type of cookies and so the form is off by 2 or 3 cases for the extra packages they are required to order.
Now you may be saying to yourself, how is it that the form was not fixed or that no one else noticed. Everyone at council and the other service unit cookie chairs noticed right away and they've been sending me e-mails for months, but since I don't have a troop and I'm not filling in the form, I didn't know what they were talking about until 2 a.m. in the morning when the 8 columns just would not add up. The forms look so pretty all typed up, that I only checked the handwritten one. Silly, silly me. Almost every typed form was wrong, which made all my totals wrong, which made me very grumpy at 2 a.m.. Unfortunately (actually it was kind of fortunate so I could put the thing down and go to bed), I couldn't finish the forms, because one leader turned their order in late, by e-mail, to my office (and darn this morning if I didn't write it all in without checking the adding and it was wrong.)
Ordering girl scout cookies is an art and yet we let novices order away. This morning, reading the late order, I realized that the new Brownie leader of six girls ordered more cookies for the cookie booth than all the pre-orders. Picturing myself at the end of March trying to help them get rid of 20 cases of cookies, I called to try to temper their enthusiasm. Well, 10 cases is easier than 20. Two other very experienced cookie chairs also ordered a lot more for booth sales than they had for pre-orders. Such dreamers. Me, I'm wondering if such a pesimist as I should be the person training all the new leaders about cookie sales. I mean I can't even add 8 columns.
So it's girl scout cookie time--how is it that I forgot what it was like to stay up until 2 a.m. trying to make 8 columns of numbers add up correctly. It seemed so de ja vu, and yet I didn't remember that part. We are down to 24 troops, this should be simple as pie and yet, there's always something. This year, there is a form on line that the leaders can download on their computer, type in and the form does the adding for them. Then they can e-mail the form to me, voila, they are done. So easy. EXCEPT THE FORM ADDS IT WRONG. The form will add all the packages of all the different types of cookies and come up with the total number of cases, by dividing by 12. Unfortunately, they must order full cases of each type of cookies and so the form is off by 2 or 3 cases for the extra packages they are required to order.
Now you may be saying to yourself, how is it that the form was not fixed or that no one else noticed. Everyone at council and the other service unit cookie chairs noticed right away and they've been sending me e-mails for months, but since I don't have a troop and I'm not filling in the form, I didn't know what they were talking about until 2 a.m. in the morning when the 8 columns just would not add up. The forms look so pretty all typed up, that I only checked the handwritten one. Silly, silly me. Almost every typed form was wrong, which made all my totals wrong, which made me very grumpy at 2 a.m.. Unfortunately (actually it was kind of fortunate so I could put the thing down and go to bed), I couldn't finish the forms, because one leader turned their order in late, by e-mail, to my office (and darn this morning if I didn't write it all in without checking the adding and it was wrong.)
Ordering girl scout cookies is an art and yet we let novices order away. This morning, reading the late order, I realized that the new Brownie leader of six girls ordered more cookies for the cookie booth than all the pre-orders. Picturing myself at the end of March trying to help them get rid of 20 cases of cookies, I called to try to temper their enthusiasm. Well, 10 cases is easier than 20. Two other very experienced cookie chairs also ordered a lot more for booth sales than they had for pre-orders. Such dreamers. Me, I'm wondering if such a pesimist as I should be the person training all the new leaders about cookie sales. I mean I can't even add 8 columns.
posted by KathrynVH @ 11:15 AM
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