PARENTS KEEP COOKIE SALES FROM CRUMBLING.

Byline: John Branch Gazette Telegraph

It's Girl Scout cookie season again, but the sales force is made up of more than just little girls in Brownie vests.

Men and women in suits are just as likely to be carrying around cookie sign-up sheets.

Cubicle-to-cubicle sales, it seems, are replacing the door-to-door method.

Fears of crimes against children have pushed sales people inside and changed the makeup from an army of little girls to an even more-persuasive army of moms and dads who sell hundreds of boxes of cookies in the workplace.

Take Jan Latham, who spent five years as a cookie coordinator for her daughter's Girl Scout troop in Colorado Springs. Latham said she was an aggressive seller of cookies at Colorado Springs Health Partners, where she works.

How many cookies did she sell for her daughter?

``About 90 percent,'' she said. ``I could fill up a whole order sheet in about three hours.''

Latham is not alone. More and more parents are taking an active role in their children's fund-raisers. But the trend is raising questions about the role of Mom and Dad in such activities.

It also brings up workplace-decorum issues. Are co-workers pressured to cough up cash for cookies, candy, popcorn, wrapping paper or whatever junior is peddling as a fund-raiser for school, sports or Scouts?

Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., the parent organization for the country's councils, says cookie sales can provide a rare view of parenting techniques.

``Sometimes I think part of the cookie sale is actually Parenting 101,'' said Sue Ferguson, product sale liason at the organization's New York City headquarters.

Ferguson also called workplace sales ``a logical evolution, unfortunately.''

Shift in lifestyle

That evolution is a dramatic shift in lifestyle that has occurred during the 61 years that Girl Scouts have been selling cookies.

With more mothers working outside the home than ever before, there are fewer potential customers home during the after-school daylight hours.

And Girl Scouts are instructed to be accompanied by an adult, and never to enter a home.

``We don't encourage our girls to go door-to-door, because it's a safety issue,'' said Joan DeWitt, leader of Troop 54 in Colorado Springs.

``My own daughter doesn't go door-to-door, except to the few people that we know on our street.''

So, alternatives have emerged. Booth sales, where girls set up a table in front of a store, have become more popular. But they account for only 15 percent of the total sales.

The remaining 85 percent? While no statistics are available, a large portion is sold in the workplace - by parents.

``Sometimes several hundred can be sold at a single workplace,'' said Joan Kirkpatrick, cookie coordinator for Troop 255 in Woodland Park, Colo. ``But there doesn't seem to be any animosity between the girls about it.''

Others agree - the girls rarely see the cookie sales as a competition. Instead, they say, girls establish their own goals, working to receive different levels of recognition and ``cookie coupons'' to help pay their way to Girl Scout functions, such as summer camp. And parents should encourage that, experts say, because selling can teach valuable lessons to children.

``That should be the reason you're helping out - to teach the child some lessons in marketing, people skills and so on,'' said University of Colorado at Colorado Springs psychology professor Sandy Wurtele. ``But taken to the extreme it can be harmful.''

Parents go too far

Wurtele and others say parents sometimes go too far in everything from fund-raisers to helping build Pinewood Derby cars and science projects.

``When children can connect their activity to a result, they gain a great deal more in terms of learning and self-esteem,'' said Linda Braun, executive director of Families First, a parent-education firm in Boston. ``When a parent does it, it can have counterproductive results.''

The Girl Scouts do not have any rules about selling cookies in the workplace. They say they encourage girls to include a note on the order form if it is taken to work by their mother or father, and to be there when the order is delivered.

``We appreciate the support parents provide, but it should be a learning experience for the girls,'' said Sandy Taylor, executive director of the Wagon Wheel Council, which spreads from Park County to the Kansas border. The council expects more than 4,000 of its 6,000 members to sell cookies this year. Last year, 480,000 boxes of cookies were sold, an average of about 115 boxes per girl.

Many companies allow office sales as long as it doesn't interfere with productivity.

But some companies have moved to stop office solicitations - including MCI and Wal-Mart - recognizing what experts say is an uncomfortable situation for some workers.

People begin to feel pressured to buy from someone because that person previously bought from them. And those without kids often feel their generosity is never reciprocated.

``There's is no doubt that people think in terms of equality, or quid pro quo,'' said Joe Rosse, an associate professor of management at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Rosse says companies are right to be leery about providing a forum for that potential discomfort.

``It's not really fair to have a captive audience, and it's not really fair for the employer to provide that audience by allowing the sales to happen,'' Rosse said.

In the end, however, selling goes on in the vast majority of workplaces. And few dispute that cookie sales and other fund-raisers are an important part of keeping some organizations afloat.

But perhaps the most convincing argument against parents selling cookies comes from a top expert: former scout Karin Henninger who was the Wagon Wheel Council's champion seller in 1991, with 1,085 boxes.

Now 14, Henninger says the girls are being deprived of a pride-building experience that will stay with Tthem for years.

And she learned several creative marketing techniques by selling cookies. But getting her parents to take order forms to work wasn't one of them.

``I just feel that if the person selling doesn't want to take five minutes out of the day to go to their parent's work, why should anyone buy from them?'' Henninger said.

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