If the person selling is a boss, it can put the employee in an uncomfortable place. Below are a few possible reasons:

1. Employee may not like cookies, is diabetic, allergic to peanuts, or on a diet.

2. Employee is financially strapped and can't afford any unncessary expenses.

3.  Is the boss the only person allowed to sell? What about my kid's cookies? What if the employee already bought cookies from their own child, relative, neighbor? If I don't buy, what are my repercussions?

4.Girl Scouts history includes controversial issues: segregation, alleviated in 60s & 70s, connection to and distance from religion (GS now allows "God" to be substituted and neither requires nor bans prayer in meetings), stance on homosexuality: "don't ask don't tell," longstanding unofficial ties with Planned Parenthood. That's a deep conversation over cookies. Shouldn't I be free to support or not support any group I choose without having to explain myself?

4. Who decides what's worthy to be sold at work?  What about selling Mary Kay, Tupperware, or other products to help ends meet or pay for medical expenses? Those are good causes. How about church groups or other causes near and dear to our personal beliefs? Where does it end? Aren't we at work? What does any of this have to do with the job?

Finally, isn't this supposed to be for the child? If the child is too busy to sell, maybe the child shouldn't participate. If the child puts in the work, she deserves the reward. If not, perhaps she is successful at something else.

If a supervisor pressured me into buying Girl Scout cookies, I would view them as: unfocused, inappropriate, lacking boudaries and less professional. I need my job, and I would resent being pressured into spending personal money by the person who ultimately decides my fate at work.

Seriously, this is coming from a person who can do some serious damage on a box of Samoas and has been known to consume Thin Mints by the box.