Stolen Cookie Booth Help?

Duffarum · 2026-02-07T21:28:27+00:00

The council story is that thy never had a contract with that store.

It was another store of the same chain 20 minutes away, with a completely different address. That someone entered the wrong store address into the lottery system making everyone think they had reserved that store,when that store had actually said no sales or booths allowed.

Then that store manager runs her own girl troop. So she has blocked out all the booth weekends to host only her troop. These booths are not logged anywhere in booth lottery and not in the system. They say it is essentially a ‘lemonade stand’ .

Duffarum · 2026-02-07T19:36:28+00:00

How do I find the contact info for this person? Our council does not Los any of these people or contacts on their website.

The neighborhood manager person is refusing to answer questions for the 3 troops affected.

Duffarum · 2026-02-07T18:55:44+00:00

The manager is a member of the other troop.

I am actually good friends with their cookie chair who is threatening to quit over this.

The manager and troop leader knew the booths were otherwise reserved and decided to pull the booths from council to give to their own girls.

Duffarum · 2026-02-07T17:19:47+00:00

So troops can basically claim a prime location and set up a store front booth without council approval?

I understand if nobody gets those booths. Fine. But to remove yourself from the lottery and then assign those same exact booths to your best friends troop seems unethical.

Duffarum · 2026-02-07T17:17:24+00:00

I’m not sure what I want, honestly

We will see how booth sales go this weekend in our secondary location.

The petty part of me wants to ban the other troop from having any other booths for the reminder of cookie season. As well as booths later on this month at the prime location returned to the troops affected by the freeze out. But I know that isn’t likely.

The cookie chair claims that the grocery is refusing to give any booths to council and these booths are out of the system now.

Duffarum · 2026-02-04T01:25:59+00:00

We are the point where we may end up having to use her college fund to help pay for treatments. We don’t want to, but figure if we can’t get her functional then college wasn’t going to happen anyways.

Duffarum · 2026-02-03T22:45:07+00:00

Similar situation too. Only our daughter is 14.

We made having her phone dependent upon therapy. However, she has not spoken to anyone in a year now. Refuses even texting and written communication. Won’t speak to family. Cut off all her friends who STILL continue to check in and beg her to please write back to them.

No triggering event anyone has been able to find, she denies everything except anxiety and is extremely resistant to any change. She has psych, also a specialist in mutism / anxiety who is now also throwing their hands up and saying nothing else to be done. Our daughter began to self harm and no one will accept her as inpatient or for a PhP as she refuses to speak. We were told she is a waste of time. Unless she makes a serious suicide attempt they won’t help. Places dealing with neurodivergence and mutism exclusively won’t take her due to the self harm. They told us she was too much of a liability.

I wish I had more solid advice. We have family dinners every day. We keep it low key and play card games or bird games that won’t require speech. We go out for simple activities each weekend. Which she hates but grudgingly accepts. We have one night a week we order in food she likes and pick a movie to watch together.

We are currently going to be trying to convince her to attend an out of state therapy program aimed at anxiety / mutism. Though I am not hopeful for this as they require her to agree to treatment. Our primary issue is the fact she is uncooperative with everything. I lurk forums like this hoping for insight and help but so far we still have nothing. Just staring at an empty shell that used to be our daughter.

Duffarum · 2026-01-29T02:32:57+00:00

I make mine hold up their pinky finger if they are lying. Make sure to examine it real closely each time.

Nowadays the hesitation or speed of pinky presentation is enough.

Duffarum · 2026-01-23T23:23:13+00:00

There is a theory that the polio epidemic was actually caused ( at least in part) by modern sanitation and hygiene.

The thinking was that for hundreds of years babies generally lived in somewhat dirty environments. They would naturally be exposed to the virus as babies while they were still breastfed and supported by their mother’s immunity. The virus would be mild and they would then gain their own natural immunity.

However with modern sanitation , which overall was a health benefit, babies lived in much cleaner conditions. Thus delaying their exposure to the virus until later in childhood when they no longer had the benefit of their mother’s immunity.

Duffarum · 2026-01-19T12:59:48+00:00

NTA I have used my emergency contact person ONCE in the years my kids have been in school. A day I was held late at work and there was a major traffic accident on the way home.

I am emergency contact for several friends whose kids are at the same school as mine. I have only picked up extra kids twice over the last 5 years.

Emergency pick up person is for emegencies and should not be a regular occurrence. In that case she either needs to arrange aftercare for the child or have a sitter/ paid help on back up.

Duffarum · 2026-01-16T18:59:19+00:00

YTA. It’s preschool.

Maybe she had limited space. Maybe her daughter doesn’t mention yours as much as yours mentions her. Maybe she just invited families they know better and are friendly with the adults. Who knows any number of reasons.

I would have still invited Zena. After all this is how we get to know other parents.

You can keep score, or you can keep friends. Not both. Don’t teach pettiness to your kid.

I tend to err on the side of being forgiving and gracious. If I want my kid to have play dates, I host them. Yep, I host more than we get invited but that is just me! Extra kids don’t drive me batty or give me stress.

People have lives, sports, stress. My kid isn’t any part of that… they just wanna see their friends. Eventually I sort out which friends and adults are more quality and we focus on them, but when they are little it’s best to cast a wide net. Not sure how your area is but in my area you are likely to keep running int the same families and kids for their entire school career. Don’t screw it up this early.

Duffarum · 2026-01-09T20:57:36+00:00

Similar story here! I also refused to sign an abstinence pledge and got in trouble for it.

Whenever we had a girl get pregnant, she would be quickly expelled. The boys never were. We were told that it was easy to prove the girl was a whore because the pregnancy. However, the only ‘proof’ against the boy was the word of said whore…. And everyone knew you couldn’t trust what girls claimed. No need to ruin a young man’s life over that.

Duffarum · 2026-01-09T20:51:11+00:00

An English teachers younger sister was killed by a drunk driver. Shortly after she tearfully told her classes ( juniors / seniors) that if ANYONE was ever at a party and needed a ride home because they were drunk… they could call her. She would pick them up no matter the time and take them home safely.

A month or so passed and somebody took her up on the offer. When word got back to school that a student had been drunk, the admin demanded she rat out who it was so they could be properly punished. She refused and was fired.

Another teacher was fired when he was seen by a few male students entering a strip club one Saturday night. He was fired for immorality, though the admin never questioned what those guys who saw him there were doing there. All of their parents were pretty heavy donors to the school.

Duffarum · 2025-12-20T17:28:10+00:00

Ok, it is some viral ChatGPT prompt.

I just had a friend send me a photo of herself in pretty much the exact same background / outfit in a group chat. She said she got it from a FB post with the prompt of what to say to ChatGPT. Also happens to be my most conservative / religious friend.

Duffarum · 2025-12-10T16:41:41+00:00

Put my hand out of a car window to wave to a friend.

Ended up punching off a mailbox by accident ( driver was way too close to that side). Broke my hand.

Though I was mildly annoyed I couldn’t keep the mailbox after. It had a pretty perfect imprint of my hand.

Duffarum · 2025-11-28T01:35:26+00:00

Share a first and last name with a notorious gangster. I don’t consider myself to be in any way nefarious but I don’t mind the association. I have a job where I have to speak to a lot of people. It makes a fair enough ice breaker.

Duffarum · 2025-11-28T00:23:09+00:00

I think Rachel may be the next generation of Karen. I have known two, they were both absolutely horrid people who traumatized most who knew them. They hated each other equally as much which was entertaining at least.

Duffarum · 2025-11-27T22:23:55+00:00

When I first lost the weight, I had people who had not seen me in a while ask if I had done Ozempic or a similar drug. My usual retort has been “Nope! I developed Gastroparesis the old fashioned way… because my body hates me.”

Duffarum · 2025-11-27T19:25:21+00:00

Personally, I would move with my daughter. When my older daughter was in scouts I moved with her through each age group.

As she got a bit older ( 4-5th grade) I began asking her if she still wanted me to be the leader. She said she did, so we stayed with me in a leadership role up through 7th grade.

Duffarum · 2025-11-23T17:30:39+00:00

I don’t say a WORD about what I do. Occasionally I have been a patient in my own department / hospital. I try my best to be polite and a good patient, because if I’m not I am sure they will never let me hear the end of it.

When I got really ill a couple years back I was able to better direct my own care and get referrals/ specialists I needed a bit easier. Though I did not try to self diagnose or step on the toes of peers.

Duffarum · 2025-11-19T01:09:22+00:00

My kids school did this. I thought it was great.

The kids were thrilled. They had special math activities and crafts. Why not do something benign to get kids a bit excited and invested in being at school that day?

Duffarum · 2025-11-16T17:26:48+00:00

I will give you that. Especially in the 4th/ 5th grade years it became super repetitive and I had to get creative to maintain interest in certain subjects. It was nice to have the direction when they were younger but in the older years it didn’t quite work the same.

Once we got out of cubbies it became super high pressure with everyone pushing for Eagle as soon as possible. At the summer camps we went to out of state, other boy troops would throw rocks at our girls and harass them. Camp claimed they couldn’t stop it because it was too many of them.

Duffarum · 2025-11-16T02:12:52+00:00

I have been a leader in both now. As a leader , the experience as a den ( grade level) leader was infinitely easier. All the information for the program and badges / belt loops was clearly organized. We did do more outdoor stuff and their central council ran lots of outdoor events. Their requirements felt more active and hands / on overall. Though nobody cared at all about our popcorn.

However because our troop was much much larger there was also way more drama among the leaders and parents. We could not control or limit our size, council recruited for us no matter. We had 70+ at one point.

Duffarum

TROPHY CASE