When I was a Girl Scout, it wasn't safe for me to walk door-to-door to sell the cookies.  We lived in a rural community where sidewalks were non-existent and our house was on a local thoroughfare whose speed limit was 55 MPH.  My parents were self-employed.  We were dairy farmers.  There were neighbors that I could reach by walking through the farm fields to their houses and you can be sure that I visited each of those with my order sheet.  My mother drove me to several other houses, but we didn't live in what you could call a neighborhood, and those areas nearby that did have neighborhoods were already canvassed by Girl Scouts who lived there. 

I never won prizes for the number of cookies I sold.  I was usually in the bottom tier of cookie-sellers.  Those girls at the top usually had a large percentage of their sales from their parents co-workers.

I learned that hard work didn't always pay because sometimes people whose Mom's & Dads did the work for them.  I learned resentment of our lifestyle and of all the other advantages that growing up on a farm gave me.  I learned a lot of things that I don't thing that the Girl Scout Council wanted me to learn from that experience. 

Years later, I have un-learned a lot of that.  I am a successful woman in a high-tech career with a loving partner to share my life. But I will always remember how I felt as a sales-deprived girl when I see a Girl Scout Cookie sales sheet, whether at work or anywhere else, without a Girl Scout present.  I won't buy Girl Scout cookies from anyone except a Girl Scout. I don't think that the parents do their daughters any favors by helping them sell cookies. Sure, they win the prizes they want, but is it really the life-lesson you want to teach that if you want somethingand they certainly don't do anything good for those girls who have worked just as hard but don't have access to a parent's workplace to boost sales. 

What do daughters learn by having their parents do their work for them?