Please note update at bottom of post
Random pizza menus jammed in the doorjamb and satellite TV offers dangling from the doorknob are bad. But one Tucson solicitor sank to an even lower low by sticking a permanent sticker in the middle of an otherwise pristine front door.
To take matters down another notch, the solicitor was selling Girl Scout cookies. While the thought of Girl Scout cookies would normally leave a warm, cozy feeling in the belly – especially the thin mints – they now instead leave bile in the back of the throat.
Perhaps that’s how dad always felt when forced to coerce his coworkers into buying cookies just so little Emily could get a free subscription to Ranger Rick magazine. I never got the free subscription, by the way.
In any event, the bile rose and the tempers flared when my guy and I tried to pry the sticker from the iron security door of the condo he’s trying to rent. It would not budge.
Most would agree a scummy sticker stuck to the front of the door does not make a good first impression. Unless, of course, the potential tenant wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies.
Well, they now had a lead with the impenetrable sticker:
If you want to buy some Girl Scout cookies, please email me at Emilyscookies00@….
Since thumbnails would not budge the sticker, and the condo is way across town, removing the sticker now became a major project. We now had to traipse back across town to retrieve razor blades, paper towel and dig out the Goo Gone from that scary crate of cleaning supplies under the sink.
Next came the 20-minute traipse back to the condo, the 10 minutes of scraping followed by another 10 minutes of swearing. The entire endeavor became a major pain-in-the-butt undertaking, costing time, money and gas back and forth across town.
So we sent the Girl Scout a bill.
We did, after all, have her email address. It was on the sticker. Defacing property with a sticker containing your email address is akin to spewing graffiti that includes your home phone and street number. According to our records, Emilyscookies now owes us $56.25. And we didn’t even include pain and suffering.
Perhaps the saddest part about all this was not having to dig through that awful crate under the sink to find the Goo Gone but to realize this person was a Girl Scout (or at least affiliated with Girl Scouts if the person who did it was Emily’s mother).
Girl Scouts should really know better. We must wonder whatever happened to Girl Scouts’ respect for the environment, which should definitely include someone’s cool blue security door. Defacing someone’s property is never respectful. Nor is it acceptable, no matter how bad little Emily pines for those Ranger Ricks.
Hopefully the bill, which Emily can finance with her cookie profits, will at least serve to teach a lesson. And we hope it’s not the lesson that most of America seems to heed: all that matters is getting ahead, no matter how many people you crush, heads you chop or condo doors you wreck along the way.
UPDATE Feb. 10, 2012 –
The Girl Scouts proved once again they are part of the upstanding and outstanding organization we have all come to know. The CEO of the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona promptly responded, leaving a comment, a promise to speak with Emily regarding potentially destructive selling strategies and an offer to pay for the damage. Thank you! Girl Scouts. You still rule!
