Weird outrage over a woman getting fired for selling Girl Scout cookies at work.

And she worked in a retail store — using its retail space to sell a product and take cash that did not go into the cash register. I do not get the FoxDC presentation of this story: "Imagine being fired for selling Girl Scout Cookies at work. It happened to a woman...." Well, of course! I can't imagine thinking she doesn't deserve to be fired for this.

Quite aside from the obvious conflict with the business interests of her employer, why are adults taking over the cookie-selling that is supposed to be part of the scouts "girl-led, entrepreneurial program" (to quote Girl Scout COO Colleen Cibula)?

The fired woman's troop leader — as FoxDC puts it — is "worried" that the firing "will scare away other potential cookie moms — and end up ultimately hurting  the scouts themselves." Cookie moms?!

"A cookie mom is a self-less person. She doesn't profit from any of this in any way. She's doing it out of the goodness of her heart... I don't think anyone should be terminated for doing such a charitable thing."

Even if it is conceived of as a charity rather than an entrepreneurial program, retail workers aren't free to solicit donations for their favorite charities!

Have people lost their minds? If Girls Scouts is a good charity, it ought to be teaching the girls admirable lessons. It's bad enough that they're guilt-tripping people into eating more cookies (or buying cookies that they don't eat), but making mothers, especially working mothers, feel that they are supposed to do the work for their girls is ridiculous. Something is very wrong here.

From the comments at the link:

EVERYONE sells girl scow [sic] cookies at work! Its not safe to go door to door, and after you exhaust all your family, friends and neighbors that only leaves your co workers!

It's not safe to go door to door? Was it ever a good idea to send little girls out to be door-to-door salespersons? The cookie-selling program seems entirely unprincipled. We shouldn't even be eating cookies in the first place.

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"Scow" was an interesting Freudian slip for "scout." One definition for "scow" in the OED is: "Orkney and Shetland. ‘A big gaunt woman’... slang (chiefly U.S.). A disparaging term for a woman."

1866   T. Edmondston Etymol. Gloss. Shetland & Orkney Dial. 99   ‘A great scow of a woman’—a tall, thin, bony woman....
1960   H. Wentworth & S. B. Flexner Dict. Amer. Slang 449/2   Scow,..a large, ugly, and/or unpleasant woman.
1970   R. Lowell Notebk. 143   Often the Dutch were sacks, their women a sack, Obstinate, undefeated hull of the old scow.
1970   G. Greer Female Eunuch 265   More familiar terms in current usage refer to women as receptacles for refuse..as..scow.