The Greatest Sales Pitch In the World

I sold Girl Scout cookies for most of my life up until college.  From second grade through senior year of high school, I was going door to door, standing out in front of banks, and bothering people at Blockbuster, all for the sake of supporting the Scouts.

Every year the major way I sold cookies was site sales, where I would go out to grocery stores and banks and the like for two hour blocks of time in order to disrupt the lives of the general populace with sales pitches about boxes of delicious fat and sugar.  The older I got, the more site sales I did.  This was problematic, and the best way I can explain why is through an urban legend among older Girl Scouts.

They say that there was once a Girl Scout in high school who tried to sell cookies to a man, but he said he wanted none.  She later saw him across the street buying from an adorable little Girl Scout, maybe seven years old.  And they say this was not the only time this happened...


The fact of the matter is that people generally tend not to want to buy from older Girl Scouts.  We are simply less endearing and are perhaps seen as too old to be Girl Scouts.  What this means is that we have to better and more persistent in our sales pitch in order to bring in any customers.  So I was assertive.  Every single time a person walked by during a site sale, I asked, "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies?"  I said it so often that it started slurring into a southern drawl that I couldn't get rid of if I tried.  I also got creative with my sales.  This is where my awesome friend (who will here be known as Tonks for her sheer awesomeness) comes in.

One night in my junior year of high school Tonks volunteered to sell cookies with me.  I was ecstatic, and for very good reason.  It was a slow sales night, so we spent the better part of two hours building towers on the sales table with the cookies.  When I say towers, I don't mean stacks.  I mean tall and relatively complex structures with flying buttresses.  Every time we sold a box, we had to rebuild the structure.  It was great, and the sheer awesomeness probably convinced several customers to buy (after I assaulted them with my drawl, of course).

Afterwards, Tonks came home with me to eat dinner with my family.  As at every meal, we started with my family's only real remaining connection to religion - saying grace.  I started to speak, expecting the classic Catholic grace I had recited since childhood to come out.  Instead...





That's right.  I tried to sell Girl Scout cookies to God.  You only wish you were as accidentally blasphemously cool as me.  I really kind of wish I had finished that sentence.  Just think of the untapped divine market.  I mean, who doesn't like Girl Scout cookies?



I would like to end this post by noting that this blog is exactly one month old today.  Not long in the grand scheme of things, but after posting every day, it feels like forever.  I would really like to thank my readers for all of your support.  I have gotten such lovely comments and phone calls and complements, all encouraging me to keep going.  You are why I post every day.  I have had such a blast writing this so far, and if you think that you would also like to start a blog, go for it!  Just make sure to tell me if you do; I'd love to follow it.