Captive Audience

When I was in the high school band, I participated in fund raisers to raise money for our many trips. I remember bake sales, car washes, hoagie sales, and the like. And we also sold quite a bit of stuff door to door, such as candles, candy, and, one year, light bulbs. We did the leg work ourselves; we didn’t expect our parents to do it for us.

The only younger kids that sold anything were Girl Scouts selling cookies, which didn’t begin until the fourth grade or so. And, again, the kids did most of the work themselves, with just a bit of parental supervision.

It’s much different now. From the moment kids start in kindergarten, they are expected to sell stuff for the school, even if they don’t participate in any extracurricular activities. And because five year olds aren’t old enough to do much of the work themselves, the parents end up getting stuck with it.

This means the parents take these brochures, full of overpriced items that no one really wants, to work with them and lay a guilt trip on their coworkers, many of whom who are stuck selling the same crappy stuff for their own kids. All during the school year, there’s always someone at work trying to shake you down for one thing or another.

Many people will reluctantly buy this stuff, whether or not they want or can afford the almost weekly solicitations. They have to work with these people and think it's better to go along.

Not me. I don’t feel any obligation to buy this stuff. Nor would I sell the crap for my son when he was in school. The first time they sent home a sales brochure when he was in kindergarten, I returned it the next day with a note. I told them I was sending him to school to get an education, not to be an unpaid salesman for the school, nor would I sell the stuff for him, as I already had a job that actually paid me for my work. I would not have felt comfortable taking advantage of my coworkers as a captive audience in this way.

If he’d joined some sort of extracurricular group in high school, that would have been different, as he’d have been raising money for something he could get the benefit out of and, most importantly, he would have done the work himself and learned something in the process.

Thoughts?