I say this at the risk of being swarmed by Girl Scouts, but a while back I thought to myself, "I should try to buy from every child who approaches me selling something." After all, I spent enough years peddling band candy and (of all things) boxes of grapefruit to raise funds. It's never more than a couple bucks here or there...so why do I so often breeze past these kids, averting my eyes and giving them a weak, "Not now, thanks?"
Today, a teenager was outside Office Depot, selling candy from a cardboard box at $5 a pack to "help keep kids off drugs" as part of "Harbor schools."
My rip-off alarms were sounding: What's to stop a kid from buying $20 worth of candy and - under the guise of charity - flipping it for an $80 profit?
Then I said, Who cares? It's $5.
So I bought a pack of Snickers, which I neither wanted or needed, but another teenager - the one sitting in the car who'd just finished football practice and was waiting not-so-patiently for his mom to finish her errand so he could get home and shower - was quite happy with my new-found sense of benevolence.
2 comments:
Yeah, Joe and I always buy from the kids. It's just a little bit to make someone happy.
Such a nice blog. I hope you will create another post like this.
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