Oregon Girl Scout Troop Duped By NAT Cookie Custy Who Doesn't Pay

From Huff Po: Give two Oregon Girl Scout troops a merit badge for resilience.

Stung by a fake order of 6,000 boxes of the organization's signature cookies, the troops held an emergency sale Saturday to distribute their $24,000 of inventory, ABC News reported. Hundreds of people showed up and bought $12,000 worth, or 3,000 boxes, to put the girls back on track.

The Portland Girl Scouts will stage another cookie sale on March 23 at the group's Portland headquarters, hoping to clear the cookie surplus so it can fund summer camp and a homeless shelter donation, according to The Oregonian.

Scouts spokeswoman Sarah Miller told the paper, "This was a really tough lesson regarding business ethics. But this outpouring of support from the community, [the Girl Scouts] carry that with them forever."

The troops thought they had hit the corporate mother lode when a woman from a local business emailed the giant order before the March 10 deadline, The Oregonian noted. However, the girls soon discovered no money would be forthcoming because the email came from the daughter of the woman as a prank.

It was too late to cancel the order; the mountains of boxes had already arrived. The hoaxster "hurt our feelings a lot," Girl Scout Erin Donnelly, 8, told ABC News. But when crunch time hit, good Samaritans restored the girls' faith, Miller said.

Girl Scout cookies raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually -- and also attract the attention of larcenous cookie monsters and scammers, the Los Angeles Times reported. In a story headlined "Girl Scout cookie thieves leave crumbs all over the country," the Times mentioned a few noteworthy incidents in the "crime wave," including the pilfering of $18,900 worth of cookies Feb. 26 from a warehouse in Spartanburg County, S.C.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Comments

[IxenHeart]

I hope that mom that of that girl gave her the punishment of a lifetime. What a little bitch.

[Ilia]

Ugh. I need gas money and a big wad of spending money. I want to help those girls out, but they're too far away.

[Canary]

What kind of person plays that kind of a joke? Really if I was that girls mother I would forcing her to go help sell all those cookies that she thought it would be so funny to dump on all those girls.

[cashykat]

I agree Canary, I would make that girl sell all those cookies herself!

[The Last Archimedean]

This is just sad that someone wuold want to pull a stunt like this. Thankfully, the scouts look like they'll be able to sell them anyway. If I lived there I'd buy a few boxes myself, especially the Thin Mints.

I hope Mom grounds the girl for life and revokes her computer privilegs.

[NC Tony]

People who play "pranks" like this are one of the lower life forms. I just wish I could be there when karma finally comes around and bites her in the ass.

[Sales Agent Guy]

I so hope that girl is punished harshly for what she did. Hell, I'd ban her from using electronics unsupervised until SHE was too old to use electronics!

[Perky]

When any of the troops in my Service Unit gets a large order like this I have the leaders ask for a security deposit, like half the money for the order. If the person or business isn't willing to do that, then 9 out of 10 times it is a prank. And yes we have had people try that with some of my troops.

[Perky]

@Canary, I think the girl who did that isn't fit to wear the uniform of a Girl Scout. I don't believe the scouts she pranked would want to work next to her and I wouldn't want anyone in the general public to mistake her for a hard working scout.

I think she should be made to go to those special cookies sales and stand there with a sign that says "I'm the person who played the prank on the Girl Scouts"

[scout]

Guys, a girl scout didn't do this! Some buisness b*tch duped the troop into thinking they had a large order. I promise you, no good leader would go on a little girl's word that they had a huge order like that. There is too much money involved to go off of the girl's honor.

[Perky]

@Scout--I think maybe I wasn't clear in my post. I don't think anyone is saying that a Girl Scout did this.

I'm not only a Girl Scout Leader, but I also work with the management of the Girl Scouts in my area. I manage about 30 to 40 troops (the number of troops I manage varies year to year). I'm only saying this so you know that due to my position I have to be pretty aware on Girl Scout rules, regulations and by-laws.

One of the by-laws that is fairly common from state to state is that girls selling cookies need to be in uniform. Now what is considered as "uniform" varies from region to region. In my region as long as a scout is wearing the official girl scout pin she is considered "In uniform" But in other areas of the country a girl scout needs to have her vest or slash with her troop # on it in order to be considered "in uniform" but for the most part girls selling cookies need to have some sort of official identification that they are indeed Girl Scouts.

So in response to Canary, who suggested that the girl who played this prank on that troop be made to help the girls sell the cookies that would mean that that girl would have to be registered as a Girl Scout and don the official uniform of that region in order to sell the cookies. To me, I do not feel that a girl who would play such a prank deserves to be a Girl Scout and she would bring dishonor to the uniform and traditions of Girl Scouting.