Did Anyone Else Dread Having To Sell These Every Year?

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Truck_Stop_Sushi@reddit

I’d rather sell a $1 chocolate bar than a $25 bag of popcorn.

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I don't think it's stupidity, it's more ignorance. They know academically that "x action = bad" but don't know why or can't see it in their mind.

i would have 100% taken the money back and returned it had my school pulled some shit like this

luckily nobody actually cared enough about the fundraisers to pull more than, like, 10 orders--all from family and friends.

Same! No way would my parents have allowed me to go door to door by myself. If I ever did it was for Halloween or carolling and my dad was with me.

He was the best trick-or-treating dad! He would stand there and graze at the candy bowl. No one would ever stop him. My uncle tattled recently that Daddy wasn’t supposed to eat candy.

Reminds me of a stand up comedy bit I once heard: “Did anybody else ever think that maybe the Puritans had to leave England because nobody could stand those pricks over THERE either?”

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bitsy88@reddit

“Did anybody else ever think that maybe the Puritans had to leave England because nobody could stand those pricks over THERE either?”

Often.

Source: my ancestors came over on the Mayflower and if my living family is any indicator, my ancestors were insufferable pricks.

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ApatheistHeretic@reddit

Ancestors?! Hell, some of my immediate relations are insufferable pricks that would light the fire on the stake you're tied to...

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TheBackPorchOfMyMind@reddit

Grew up Mormon. Same experience. Didn’t even get my own planet

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ResurgentClusterfuck@reddit

Guess you don't have enough wives to rate one /j

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Jolly_Line@reddit

Haha. I dunno man, you’re not dead yet.

If you haven’t come across her, I highly recommend checking out Alyssa Grenfell.

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TheBackPorchOfMyMind@reddit

Oh yeah she’s great. I follow all the exmo podcasters

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Jolly_Line@reddit

Rad. Yeah, she does a great job. Mormons definitely had it worse than me, but there’s a ton of crossover, the breakdown of which provides lots of catharsis.

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Swimming-Food-9024@reddit

Christian paperwork?!

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Like a commemorative license plate type thing for a sports team or something? I had a couple of those. Definitely not the same thing but the card could have at least been fun. Still got to piss you off getting handed that shit when you worked so hard for something else.

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rory_kc@reddit

I did the same thing for that camera. My first 35mm! What I got was made of such cheap plastic that the teeth on the rollers broke off the first time I tried to load some film.

muskie71@reddit

A villain was born that day!

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OilRude@reddit

They definitely stole your camera

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larryjrich@reddit

Ugh, I have no idea why schools and parents allowed this. It was such an exploitation of children as cheap labor. You had to sell $10k worth of chocolate just to get a dollar store toy.

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rileyoneill@reddit

It never amazes me how much school time was spent on some private company showing up and having kids run their local sales teams for absolute cheap ass commissions. I remember selling catalog crap that was a mix of chocolates and household trinkets.

I got a watch one year.

Totally dog shit quality. I was insulted they thought I would work that much for a piece of junk like that.

Turns out it was child labor

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Insomniac_80@reddit

Hmm, how much would the camera have cost without the candy bars? With "prizes," sometimes it is good to compare the amount of work (quarters spent in arcades, candy/cookies required for sale), versus just outright buying it.

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WilliamMcCarty@reddit

I was dirt poor as a kid, I wouldn't have ever been able to afford that camera. That was why I wanted to do that in the first place, it was the only way I'd ever get it.

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Few-Diamond9770@reddit

Frankly, might have been a good life lesson

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WilliamMcCarty@reddit

Yeah, I was just telling someone else how my mom had warned me against it, that this was usually some bs and the prize was never what they promised. Lesson learned.

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britinsb@reddit

They looked at the paper and said "so you did. Oh well, this is what they sent. Sorry, kid."

Then took a picture of your sad face with their new camera.

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WilliamMcCarty@reddit

Also sales tactics are BS and everyone hates them. I remember my church group had this “free” car wash but we were supposed to use selling tactics to get donations for the free car wash. I knew I wouldn’t win so I barely tried. I felt like they should have just charged for the car wash but why do something that makes sense?

My wife and I still talk about how jealous we were of the kids that lived in town vs us kids that lived out in the country.

The kids in town could knock on doors and sell to all sorts of neighbors.

Wait, what? We’re supposed to sell them?!?!?

I thought we just had our kids bring home the boxes and they sat there for two weeks while we ate them all…

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MadMac619@reddit

Selling these was my gateway to selling drugs and then getting into B2B sales as a career. So nah, I loved doing this shit.

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m8k@reddit

My daughter got that box this year and we just bought the whole thing.

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DoctorFenix@reddit

"Sell 87 dollars worth of chocolate and we'll give your school 5 dollars and you get a bike lock."

Lmao. I just didn't. I always felt shamed because classmates could get parents and coworkers to buy them. I didn't have that support.

I meant less in the sense of purchasing them aforethought and more you wind up impulsively consuming them.

My niece does a lot of fundraising for dance. So I started asking her mom how much does she get and do they have a minimum for the group. If it's a product I don't want and they don't have a minimum needed, I'll just give her cash. Sometimes they don't get very much per item so she ends up with more money this way.

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toasterb@reddit

Once fundraisers started coming home with our kids, we decided that we’d just give money directly to the school or whatever.

“That’s what we pay property taxes for” is exactly what my dad said when he declined to buy either a chocolate or a taffy bar when I had to sell them.

I lived in an old Victorian in a part of town that used to be a neighborhood, but all that was left was my house and two others in a mile radius from my house, so no door to door. Parents wouldn’t bring the box to work, so I was on my own with no transportation or ability to sell the damn things.

So then I got in trouble for giving them away to other kids at school bc I was tired of carrying them around. lol

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Woyaboy@reddit

I almost always stole a few. Nobody ever seemed to be the wiser. Just turned them all back in and that was that.

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mysecretissafe@reddit

It was a required activity to be in computer class on my side, and they had a unit count on each box they gave out to sell- didn’t sell a box? Didn’t get to be in computer class with all those sweet Mac classics.

Giving them away, while getting me in a lot of trouble, got my parents a stern talking to by admin who made them cough up the money to make right my ‘thieving’ against the school. I didn’t care about politics or the principles of my neglectful parents at the time, I just wanted to use a Mac, even if it meant steno work on ClarisWorks.

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Lost-Wedding-7620@reddit

My school just gave us a paper and said we had to go sell the chocolates on the list and the orders would be placed after they had everyone's lists back. My mom took the list, "if they tell you that you have to sell these, tell them to call me", and proceeded to throw away the list. She once went to a PTA meeting to ask why on earth they expect children to do this fundraising for them. My dad was team "no, my taxes pay for this you aren't doing it."

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OdinsGhost@reddit

This is precisely the line in the sand I have drawn with my own kids. They will never be forced to sell any of this garbage, and if their schools need fundraiser money I will give it to the school or club directly. And if it comes with a prize, I’ll likely just give that to my kid directly too. The companies selling these types of ventures to schools and school children are predatory and parasites. They always have been.

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HomeAir@reddit

My brother always has to sell the coupon books for football. They were like $35.

Lucky.

Growing up, there were either stores with kids who were ‘allowed’ to be out there selling, and you got chased off if you weren’t on that list (thinking back, probably the kids of people who worked there).

Now I have a daughter and there's no end to the fundraising shenanigans they want her to do. She doesn't want to. I have her back. No free candy bars yet though.

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Terrynia@reddit

My dad bought them all. We have a bad sugar addiction…

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hotChihuahua69@reddit

Um...

You were supposed to sell them?

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PhuckNorris69@reddit

Are they finest as in the most fine, as in like the most ok

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scotttydosentknow@reddit

I used to sell them for $2 a bar and pocket a dollar on every sale 😬

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marius1972@reddit

Oh my goodness I forgot about these I ask my grandmother take them to work to see if she could sell and did sold out they were also pretty good from what I can remember 🤓

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sjp1980@reddit

Holy shit!

I asked my brother and mother to buy 2 each. Yeah, #low goals. I didn't realize they were forcing us to basically work a sales job with no base pay or commission at an early age.

I have a big like fake leather bag my grandpa gave me. It was full of these. He told me it was given to him by the owner, probably in the late 90s or early 2000s. But it may have just been the regional rep or something.

No_Classic_1743@reddit

Sold a couple, ate the rest. What are they going to do, arrest me?

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I just brought the box home, and mom would eat them all.

I invented hanging out in front of the grocery store in 1979. Sold a whole 12.

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Icy-Finance5042@reddit

I always really enjoyed doing the door-to-door sales growing up.

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Once you can sit down at the table, it’s pretty much a sale

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ijustsailedaway@reddit

My neighborhood would have been super cute in the 40s when it was built. By the time we were there, they were starter houses for lowest middle class or "rich poor" but there were still holdouts of original owners that were octogenarians maintaining pristine lawns.

by the 00s I wouldn't have let my kids ride bikes around there.

I drove by in early 2024 and I felt like I shouldn't have driven through during daylight. My house looked like it might be a literal crack house now. I looked up the neigborhood on Zillow and I could by three empty lots each for about $7,000-9,000 or a lot with a house for $30,000. Which tells you something about how bad the neighborhood is considering this is a medium sized city.

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kg51113@reddit

going on my own, into strangers’s houses

In the 1980s, they told us very specifically to NOT go into a stranger's house.

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1kreasons2leave@reddit

I always really enjoyed doing the door-to-door sales growing up.

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ResidentHooman@reddit

Same here! Was great until the 50th chocolate bar.

I did love the caramel filled bars though.

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SeniorSleep4143@reddit

Same! Still never won any though. My parents would just buy the bare minimum that had to be sold and call it a day

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judasmitchell@reddit

We always had prizes for the students that sold the most. I’d bust my ass and always lose to the kids whose parents bought all their shit. It was definitely a life lesson.

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BostonBlackCat@reddit

My daughter is in Girl Scouts and they no longer just give the girls the boxes of cookies to go door to door. They do have set cookie booths for the troop to do as a whole, but not for the individual girls.

I'll buy a box if they're a dollar and pass them out.

One of my friend's aunt bought 2 boxes from me, she gave me all the chocolate too. That was the last and final time I ever sold fundraising chocolates thank God.

I got so sick of eating those chocolates after awhile.

Now, I feel obligated to buy them when it's some co-workers kid or a relative.

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PuppyJakeKhakiCollar@reddit

My parents would just pay for the whole box and we got to eat candy bars every day after school until they ran out.

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afleetingmoment@reddit

As a kid the concept of selling things to people for my own benefit was odd to me. Now it’s even stranger. We want children to finance themselves by hawking overpriced crap to people? It’s like when your friend gets into an MLM. Now you’re suddenly their bait and you have to awkwardly get out of the situation.

Our band director had some kind of deal with a fruit company from Florida. For all our trips he made a huge fuss over it. I hated it. Who wants to walk around asking people to buy $40 cases of oranges and grapefruits? And then we had to be at the school to unload the huge ass truck when they all got delivered.

No, because I’d always sell out before I could even start going door to door to sell them. As soon as my aunts knew I had those they always bought as much as they could.

Now, I’m the dude who will tell parents to come to me with a full box. I just buy the whole thing. Good chocolate plus help a kid. Win-win.

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blue_suavitel@reddit

I loved eating them. They don’t taste the same anymore.

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SLPNerdLady@reddit

I had a hard time not eating all of mine

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Ok_Orchid1004@reddit

Yeah worlds finest hahahahahahahahaha!

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greymalken@reddit

I would just eat them.

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Immudzen@reddit

I HATED this stuff. I HATED trying to sell stuff to anyone and that chocolate is bad.

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bythog@reddit

I sold them for marching band (which was the only way I could afford to be in it). Our setup wasn't really all that bad. Each box was $25 for 50 bars, you sell each bar for $1. "World's Finest" gets their $25 and the other $25 went directly to me.

had a kid in my class who would always claim to never get a box.

turns out he would keep the box in his locker and just give them away.

This one time at band camp 😂

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I actually liked selling these. Sometimes the teachers would organize their own regular candy sales to pay for class trips also. Like, legit boxes of Snickers and M&Ms for individual resale to pay for a class trip to an amusement park or something similar. To me, these candy bars bring back fond memories of being able to visit parks my family might not have been able to take me to on their own. 😊

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Ugh_Im_Ugly@reddit

Just bought these from the neighbor kid.

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boredtodeath@reddit

It was just a shakedown for the parents, as they end up paying for most of it anyway. What did they expect, that everyone in the family was going to resist taking a bar when you brought this giant box home?

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cliowill@reddit

I will buy them to help someone, but I highly doubt it is the world's best.not for a dollar or 2

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fubes2000@reddit

Selling them for school it was just to friends, neighbours, and parents' coworkers to make the min quota.

But one year my youth bowling league put up a CD boom box as a prize and I HAD to have it. My dad came up with the idea to park me outside of the liquor store Friday and Saturday nights [he watched me from the car] and I think I sold about $400 of chocolate covered almonds. I was WELL ahead of the race and got the stereo. I think I used that thing for about a decade, most of which was just stealing my brother's CDs.

I'm pretty sure that the bowling alley put up the prize themselves, which is why I didn't get stiffed like it seems everyone else in this thread did.

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zenprime-morpheus@reddit

I remember buying bars off of friends.

Da_Rabbit_Hammer@reddit

You mean allow me and my family to slowly eat them all forcing my parents to buy them all come time to square up? Yes, yes I did.

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ResurgentClusterfuck@reddit

No, I didn't dread it, I took them to City Hall and sold out in moments

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Naramie@reddit

I remember doing these and the magazine subscriptions sales. My friend and I busted our asses going door to door beat the average. At the end year we were given Weepuls these shitty little fuzzy pom pom toys. We were so fucking pissed about it because they were advertising much better rewards and Weepuls were not listed at all. Had we known we were going to get Weepuls we wouldn't have wasted our time.

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joesbagofdonuts@reddit

I only really tried one year. I went door to door, sold all kinds of shit, knife sets, cooking ware, etc... a lot of people paid in cash, which I carried around in an envelope clipped to the order sheets. I brought it over to a friend's house, whose family was really wealthy, and it just fucking disappeared. I'm fairly certain their housekeeper stole it. I felt soooo fucking guilty, because I didn't even have the order sheets, and neither me nor my family had the money to repay these people. I went back to one of the houses I knew had ordered something and explained and told them that if they remembered what they ordered I would give them their money back. They told me not to worry about it. The whole experience was so embarrassing for me as a shy 6th grader I couldn't make myself go back any of the other houses I had visited to explain. I just couldn't. I feel like a small part of my innocence died that day. I don't blame the housekeeper, who was underpaid, and certainly thought it was one of the rich family's kids who could have afforded that hit

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MightBeAGoodIdea@reddit

Long story: I was such a goodie little two shoes in school through the 5th grade. Like Hermione would have told me to lighten up level of teacher pet personality. Then the 6th grade happened and i was told i needed to sell these to earn points, which could be converted to tickets, and tickets could be used to participate in events later with real cash prizes. The best prize was $100 but only people who had 10 tickets were eligible to enter and only 1 person would win. I told the teacher that i didn't think it was fair that they expected us ALL to sell over $100 worth of merchandise when only 1 student in the whole school would be eligible for a $100 prize; i remember i even offered to show them the math because we were just learning fractions and it seemed to obviously unfair to me....

She sent me to the principals office for the first time in my life. I had to call my mother and tell her specifically that i was refusing to participate in class. This confused my mother who decided to come to the school because i was sobbing on the phone and the principal couldn't clearly explain the issue either. When she got there and heard the context of the whole deal she took my side immediately and told the principal and teacher i was NOT to participate and that it was her making that choice, not me. Should have meant not my fault...

Well the school still made me sit in the library with all the other detention level kids during the celebration where kids got all sorts of cheap toys and dollar bills and school supplies and stuff, and i wasn't allowed to go on the field trip to the hershey factory later that year either because of my "disciplinary record". Made lots of friends in detention though, friends my parents probably wouldn't have liked, by the next year i completely changed personalities from Hermione to Ron and stopped caring about school entirely.

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monkeykins@reddit

i stopped doing it when i lost the weepuls competition for gathering up recyling. I lived near a lot of on-going construction so i asked the contractors to chuck them in a little pile and i'll collect. I got A LOT.

only to be taken over by some student whose dad owned a junk yard. i mean...that seems unfair....

i never tried again.

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B1GFanOSU@reddit

The Beavis & Butthead bit on that was spectacular.

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Advanced-Light4384@reddit

My box broke as I was carrying it between classes and a hoard of kids descended on me and stole them. We were poor so that sucked.

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ThrenderG@reddit

I had to sell these for little league. I would just walk down to the grocery store and sit and hope people would stop and buy one. In reality I knew my mom would buy the rest so I didn't really try very hard. Seemed weird to me anyway that my upper middle class neighborhood's little league, with so many well-heeled parents, would subsidize itself by making the players hawk chocolate to the neighbors.

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angmarsilar@reddit

I pay my kids not to sell them. I'll give the school call and say, ""No thanks" when they try to give him a box.

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CaliSasuke@reddit

I didn’t really dread it. My problem was I enjoyed the bars so much I would eat a lot of my inventory and then ow them cash.

Outrageous_Lettuce44@reddit

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They were good but I always felt I was forced to sell a generic product "not found in stores" at a premium price.

I'll let this student article from 2018 make my point for me:

https://athensoracle.com/4385/opinions/the-dark-truth-behind-the-chocolate-consumed-on-valentines-day/

I teach, and I have no idea why schools still use this company. The best one I've seen in about 9 years was a Dominos coupon card this year that the band was selling. 1/2 off all pizza purchases with that year for a 20$ card. I bought seven and gave them to teachers with families to feed.

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LazyLaserWhittling@reddit

no, just eating them… disgusting chocolate

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braxwack@reddit

A kid in my peewee football sold the most candies, so as a reward, he received an autographed Houston Oilers football. One of the dads offered him $100(1984ish) for the ball but he first played with it and smeared the autographs. The guy got pissed and told him to keep it. I also remember some pretty good Mcdonald coupons.

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bjgrem01@reddit

I busted ass selling those. Once. I got one of those phones that looked like a shoe.

My mom decided that would go in her room.

Hot_Cat_685@reddit

My mom let me and my sister and our friends eat them all, then didn’t pay for them. I wasn’t allowed to participate in my dance performance and had to watch from the stands. It was humiliating. Just looking at these bars makes my stomach turn.

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tortical@reddit

I used to sell Christmas wrapping paper and ribbons. Chocolate would have been easier.

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Morganafrey@reddit

Dang, I forgot About those

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Pharmere@reddit

I’m selling them now for my daughter’s Campfire Group🤦‍♂️

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anniemdi@reddit

No way. My dad worked with hundreds of people and they had a well established honor system for funraising goods from GS Cookies to BSA popcorn to these candy bars and my mom worked retail where they didn't sell gum and candy next to the till so when these showed up everyone would buy one.

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bassman314@reddit

Nope. I just plain refused to participate. My clubs/sports hated this and really didn't push us to fundraise much. Band was forbidden from any sort of fund raising, despite having the largest budget.

My brother was in FBLA, and was an officer, so he had to participate. He'd buy 2-3 boxes. My dad would pay him back for it, and we'd eat it at home.

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aniyabel@reddit

Hahaha my kids have to sell them!

Unusual_Cupcake9812@reddit

I think it was one of the more popular things that we had to sell back in the day

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beekersavant@reddit

I am a high school teacher. When the cheer squad inevitably comes around with those twice a year, I announce it at the beginning of class and give a 5 minute window before an activity to sell. Then we all eat chocolate. It’s a $1 a piece for a decent chocolate bar. You gotta lean in.

Don’t have packed room full of hungry teenagers. Try outside a movie theater for 3 hours before Captain America. Where do they massively mark-up snacks? Sky-Zone- Bowling whatever.

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Codenamehardhat77@reddit

Not only did I sell these as a kid, by time I got to middle school my parents got a Sam’s Club membership. It was the late 80’s and a Sam’s store just opened in our area. So my stepdad bought candy bars in bulk and sends me to school with a backpack full of hersheys candy bars of different types to sell. Buying in bulk at the time, the candy bars cost us around 18 cents each and we sold them for 50 cents. Worked out really well for about a week. Then I got caught and got into a lot of trouble. Only allowed to sell stuff at school if the school gets a cut.

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MonkeyChoker80@reddit

Used to have a coworker whose nephew paid for his first year of college doing something similar.

Kid would buy bulk ‘Monster/Rock Star’ drinks Sam’s Club, then sell them for double/triple.

First actually at school, during lunch.

Then, when that got banned, he’d store a giant cooler full of drinks and ice in his car and sell them from there.

Then, when that got banned, he’d park juuuusssst outside of the school boundaries, and sell out his cooler at that spot.

I was just trying to diagram the layout lmao.

Visual-Fig-4763@reddit

I came home with them every year and my mom would buy some and then my dad would take the rest to work. I never actually sold them myself.

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Cisru711@reddit

Lucky you

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idog99@reddit

This year, my son's school sent an option to just pay $50 to get out of this fundraising obligation.

We gladly took it.

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MakeMyDayRightNow@reddit

In my hood, i occupied the street corner selling my bars, while on the other corner the other dude hustled his “baggies.” 😆

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fallensoap1@reddit

I loved these. I mostly had my mom and dad buy them for me cuz I loved eating them

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but_does_she_reddit@reddit

Ok kids, time for y'all to get kidnapped hocking chocolate!

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floodums@reddit

No but I looked forward to buying them every year.

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debaser64@reddit

stevemajor@reddit

At my school we sold wrapping paper.

I lived in a small town in a neighborhood of 4 houses. My next door neighbor was always super cool about fundraisers, though, and he'd always throw in a nice large chunk of donations or buy whatever crap we were selling.

Then my dad would take the box of candy or order forms or whatever, and he'd just set the box up in the lobby of his building with an envelope full of change and let people do their own thing. At the end of the day he'd collect the now empty box and money and I'd take it back to school.

I never got anything good, of course. Those fundraisers are an absolute racket. But I'm also super competitive, so I always wanted to have the most sales just so I could say that I did.

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deansredhalo@reddit

Ugh I was literally just laughing about this stuff with my mom last night.

Growing up in a fairly rural area it was nearly impossible for me to sell very many of these. My best friend had a parent that worked at a pretty large factory a town over. They’d take this thing into the break room at work and clear the whole thing out in one afternoon and he’d get some cheap prize. I was always jealous haha

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lachrymologyislegit@reddit

I only sold to my parent's friends / family. So I only got the bare minimum prizes.

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Spartan04@reddit

Thankfully we only had this as a fundraiser once or twice that I can remember.

A easier fundraiser we had once was similar in that we sold M&Ms. The difference was that they were a brand people knew, not some weird off brand chocolate bar, and we sold them at a reasonable price. I’d just take the boxes and put them on the table next to me in the high school cafeteria during lunch and so many people would just come up to me to buy them. Same thing with selling them on the bus ride home after school.

The worst were the catalog style sales. They always told us not to go door to door but of course most of us did. Went to almost every house in my neighborhood and so few people wanted to buy that crap. Plus for those that did you still had to put in the orders and then go back later to deliver. At least the candy sales were cash and carry.

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Roaming_Red@reddit

It was tasty chocolate though.

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411592@reddit

ugh…