A few years ago, I realized that a family tradition had continued when I got a flier for a candy sale from my son’s school. The torch had been passed. Another generation of fund-raisers was in the world!
“Back in the day,” I was a passionate junior salesperson. I earned a View-Master (remember those?) selling seeds. I remember very clearly lecturing one victim, err, customer, about the seeds and plants available. He placed a large order, and I was so proud. How embarrassed I was when I later learned that the man was a botany professor who always referred to me thereafter as the “Super Seed Salesman.”
During adolescence, I developed the soft-sell technique that I use to this day: Buy your own products and then look people in the eye and tell them you own them yourself.
In those days, we sold ugly things. In the new millennium, however, foodstuffs rule. Going to work is like going to a smorgasbord. People are selling candy, pizzas, steaks, and chicken. I can’t recommend this regimen for weight loss. No one sells salads or vegetables.
Fund raising covers a multitude of sins. For those of us who would rather attend outdoor midnight mass in Green Bay than go to meetings, it’s the perfect out. What would the PTA rather have: your well-padded seat in a folding chair on Monday night or $150 in profits from the gift wrap sale? (I know there are parents who do both, but they are saints, like Mother Teresa.) In my own mind, I make this more virtuous by buying a lot of stuff and then saying that I’m done with my Christmas shopping.
This form of commerce does have its rules, however. Among them:
Buy from others as you would have them buy from you. There is no greater proof of karma than this. Unless you cooperate with co-workers, you will come up empty-handed when it’s your turn to peddle petunias. This also applies to sponsoring walkathons, bikeathons and thonathons. The only acceptable excuse for not buying Girl Scout cookies is that you already have ordered from a blood relation.
Bring the catalog on payday. People are much more open to buying when there is money in the bank, however fleeting that may be. Those with independent means can smile and say, “Don’t worry about it; just pay me when you can,” to increase order size. Be sure to get payment in advance from temp agency workers, though.
I’m the mother, not the salesman. I’m willing to show the glossies at work, but when it comes to family; my heir has to make the phone calls. If I hear whining, I say—in the same tone my parents used to tell me that they had to walk to school—I had to go door-to-door when I was little.
Pride goeth before the fall; once school starts, we can’t afford it. Somebody asked me if I felt embarrassed for hawking this stuff. I didn’t even blink.
There are only two options: 1) I can pay higher taxes to get the computers, playground equipment and personnel that schools need but budgets don’t allow. 2) I can sell goodies, get a better situation for the kids and help everybody get fatter.
In the days before the income tax, rich people endowed schools and hospitals left and right. It was a way of achieving celebrity status and sometimes of assuaging guilt.
Those days are gone. But the needs of the next generation continue. I may not be a Rockefeller, but my son and I can help build the future, one box of candy at a time.
It’s not the worst tradition to pass on.
