Blech!!! Can I just tell you how much I hate when my kids bring home fund raisers? They've been in school for about 9 weeks and already this year I have been expected to sell:
- Pepsi products
- Nuts and candy
- Christmas wreathes
- Raffle tickets
The Pepsi products are sold by the case. These cases are heavy and take up lots of room in your car. If you sell a lot, you have to make several trips. They are a pain to pick up, load, unload and deliver to the buyers.
Nuts and candy from a catalog are easier to deliver but this is one of those catalogs where everything is way overpriced. I know that this is how the school makes money but asking people to buy a can of nuts for 12.50 that they can get in the store for 3.00 is just embarrassing. The other stuff in the catalog is just as bad, mostly cheap crap that is way overpriced that people don't want or need but feel they have to buy just because your kid is asking....not to mention that next month their kid will be asking YOU to look at the same Cheap Crap Catalog and they will expect you to return the favor.
Christmas wreathes....a nice idea. They look nice on the flyer. Full and green and pretty. Problem? There are several. First, they are fresh wreathes, not silk. So, you have to get these delivered quickly before needles start to fall off and chances are even if you do, you'll end up with a car full of needles anyway. And next....they are $25.00! For $25.00 I would want something that could be saved and brought out each year, not something that is going to die and I have to throw away. No one is going to buy these.
Raffle tickets are the easiest of all to deliver....there's no ordering, no matching which item to which customer, no delivering. Just fill it out, rip it off and collect your money. What could be bad about this? Well, I'll tell ya. The raffle tickets we've been asked to sell this year are for a prize of a weekend getaway at our local bed and breakfast and includes an overnight stay, dinner, breakfast, 30 minute spa and chocolate dipped strawberries with beverages for two. Lovely, don't you think? The problem here is that the tickets are 10 bucks apiece. Now it's bad enough that I have to ask people to buy some piece of crap from the Cheap Crap Catalog, but at LEAST they DO get the piece of crap they ordered. NOW, I'm asking for 10 dollars for a CHANCE that they MIGHT win and give them a ticket stub for their hard earned 10 dollar bill. Let us remember that there are at least 100 kids who were all given 10 tickets to sell....that we KNOW of. God only knows how many other clubs, sports, schools are selling them too, so chances that they'll win are pretty minimal.
The worst part is they present these fund raisers to the kids with these huge fund raiser kick off events! They show them these wonderful prizes they can have and the more they sell the more they get. This last Cheap Crap Catalog fund raiser had the big prizes as Guitar Hero, a Wii game system, a $200 gift gift card or an Ipod. And you only had to sell 100 items to claim one of these prizes!!! First of all I don't know 100 people I could ask to buy from the Cheap Crap Catalog. I don't know 25 people even if I could get them to buy four things each. And yet they get these kids pumped to go out and sell, sell, sell! PULEASE! They know it's the parents who have to sell this junk.
I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother anymore. I know, it's sad, isn't it? But after 17 years of this, non-stop from the time Kristi was in pre-school, I've really had enough. Now, if I can afford it that week, I buy something just so my child can turn something in and that's that. Usually my mom will buy something too. I'm not hitting up my poor church friends or my work friends or my husband's work friends or my neighbors anymore. Sorry, schools, but I just can't do it anymore. But that's what you have the new crop of kids coming in for, right? LOL
See ya next time! :o)
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