How to Get to Middle Management

Anyone who works in an office knows the deal – one day you’re buying chocolate from the receptionist’s kid, then the next day you’re buying cookies from the IT guy’s daughter. The next week there’s a box of fundraiser candy in the break room. Someone else’s spawn is going on a church trip and is selling wrapping paper and candles to fund it. Then someone hands you an order sheet for Boy Scout popcorn (which reminds me: Listen up, boys – you will NEVER compete with the girls and their cookies, so just give it up already. I mean, come on now. While I am perfectly willing to spend $3 on a box of Thin Mints or Shortbreads, I flat-out refuse to pay $4 for a box of microwave popcorn. You can’t get Girl Scout Cookies in the store, but there is nothing remotely distinctive about your stupid popcorn. It’s the same stuff I can get at Wegman’s for $1.99). And so it goes on and on and on, buying cookies and candy and popcorn and wrapping paper and candles and whatever else churches and schools and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and cheerleading teams are hawking to raise money. It’s like we all just use the same money and shuffle it back and forth. It’s the law of the office. It’s always been like that. I buy your kid’s stuff, and then you buy mine…not unlike the theory that what you spend comes back in one form or another. A return on your investment, if you will.

Now, it is important to note that, as a former Girl Scout who was fiercely dedicated to the order and moved all the way up the ranks from Brownie to Senior (yes, from kindergarten through high school), I vehemently support the Girl Scouts and everything they stand for. I love the Girl Scouts. Come cookie time, I’m all over it. It’s not just because I love the cookies and have been known to hork an entire box of Thin Mints in one sitting (which is, by the way, NOT a good idea if you have anywhere to be later that day), but it’s because I think it’s a wonderful organization and I enjoy supporting it. If I didn’t work 348 hours a week and have 43 other commitments, I would totally be a troop leader. But okay, whatever…I love the Girl Scouts and this year I spent over $50 on cookies just from the daughters of co-workers - and it had nothing to do with any return on my investment…until now.

This, I promise, is the point at which this post will cease to be a nonsensical diatribe and start to take shape.

See, now it’s my turn. I’m doing a 5K charity walk this weekend, and so I thought, “hey, I’ll ask people in the office if they’d like to pledge a buck or two!” Not a small fortune, and certainly not half a paycheck like I spent on their kids’ cookies, candy, magazines, or any of that other stuff. Everyone has been pretty receptive and generous. There were, of course, people who declined to donate. I can respect that. Not everyone has an extra dollar to pledge to a good cause. Not everyone likes to spend a dollar if they don’t get a Niagara Chocolate bar out of the deal. But what pissed me off were the two or three people to whose kids I plunked down a considerable amount of money this past year for their cookies, candy, and other fattening and/or useless crap to send them to camp or missions or so that their school could continue to operate under the stellar direction of Franciscan nuns, who looked me straight in the eye and said, “No.” Their kids won prizes for selling the most cookies, or got to camp out with Jesus and sing Kum-ba-ya, or are receiving top-notch educations thanks to me and my slightly-below-median salary...but a 5K walk to raise money for community AIDS services is not worthy of a single dollar out of their substantially larger ones. Hmm.

Well now, at long last, the mystery of middle management has been solved.