Help me Substack! I’m Being Bullied By a Teenage Fundraiser

And I don’t know what to do about it

Not long ago, I was at a fundraising event for work and walked over to a table to say hello to a few of my donors. As I approached, one of them saw me coming and said: “Dan’s here. Everybody hide your wallets!” She then made a wide-eyed, fumbling show of hiding her purse behind her back as I walked up.

It was a solid burn. And a funny start to the night. Made funnier because she said it loud enough for me to hear and she knows I can take a joke. (So, of course, I laughed, gave her a big hug, and then not-so-subtly tried to pick her pocket).

But I’m not joking when I say that I’m being bullied by a teenage fundraiser who lives down the street from me. And you, dear readers, are going to help me figure out what to do about it:

Do I challenge this teenage fundraiser to a fistfight?

Or do I try to hire her?

Two extreme choices, I know. You’ll vote at the end of this post.

Let’s call her “Scout.”

First, I don’t know Scout (or her parents) very well. She lives in my neighborhood, but our households don’t hang out. Scout is in the same grade as Child #2 and as best I can tell, they hang out at opposite ends of the same friend group. They’re friendly, but not terribly close.

Scout is active in a local Boy Scout troop (which Google tells me is now called “Scouting America”). She’s invited Child #2 to troop bonfires and other fun stuff like that. I recall giving the troop canned goods last Thanksgiving for a food drive.

That’s when the bullying started.

A couple weeks before Christmas, Scout came to my house on a mission. She knocked on my door like a jack-booted cop with a search warrant: bang! Bang!! BANG!! Super aggressive. After I calmed my dogs down—who were completely losing their minds because someone was clearly trying to knock down our door—I walked out onto the porch. I then came face-to face with the most aggressive teenage fundraiser I’ve ever encountered. Once she started talking, she didn’t stop until she closed the deal.  

I’mraisingmoneytogotoSwitzerlandandit’sgonnabesomuchfunyoushouldbuyapoinsettiathankssomuchhowmanydoyouwant.

(Teenager to adult translation: She was fundraising for a summer scouting trip to Switzerland and selling poinsettias to raise money.)

When she finally took a breath, I asked her what her troop will be doing in Switzerland.  

She shrugged and said: “Scout stuff. Poinsettias are $40. Do you want one or two?”

Photo by Ray Shrewsberry on Unsplash Not the actual poinsettia I bought, but provided here for a splash of color

I went back inside to get my checkbook and my glasses. When I returned Scout quipped, “Oh, dang! Busting out the glasses, huh?”

To recap: This kid made my dogs have a meltdown, pushed an expensive poinsettia on me that I didn’t want, and then made fun of me for wearing glasses. Classic bully behavior.

Merry Christmas, four-eyes. That’ll be $40.

It gets worse, you guys.

A month ago, I was driving Child #2 home from a sleepover and agreed to give Scout a lift too. It was a five-minute drive but over the course of that five minutes, Scout busts out a couple bottles of hot sauce that her troop is selling for this same trip to Switzerland. (Why does she have hot sauce with her on a sleepover, you ask? No idea.) She takes off her seatbelt, leans into the front seat, and rattles off the different degrees of hotness of the sauces, how the Lego figure on the label is an inside joke with her troop, andhowmanycanIputyoudownforyou’lllovethem.

A couple of the bottles of hot sauce I bought under duress

So, I bought three bottles for $40 and now I’m swimming in hot sauce that I don’t use.

Again, I ask her what the money will go toward.

“Scout stuff.”

I feel like I’m in a very George McFly fight-or-flight scenario with Biff Tannen and the future of my children is at stake. You waffle-eaters decide what I should do:

While Substack tallies your votes, I’ll be straight with you:

I actually kind of like this kid.

I admire anybody who marches up to some guy’s porch, bangs on his door, and takes a swing to make something happen for her troop. But whenever I interact with her, I feel like I’m squaring off against Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. And like my aforementioned donor who joked about hiding her wallet, I get what that feels like.

The next time this happens, I want to slow her down and help her feel comfortable slowing down her own asks. Teach her take a breath when raising money for things that are important to her. She probably thinks that if she doesn’t stop talking, I won’t have a chance to say no. But if she hit the breaks a bit, she’d learn that we have a lot in common: I was a Boy Scout for a while, too. And some of my best friends have kids who are active in scouting. And she’d learn I might not care about poinsettias or hot sauce, but I like helping people raise money to do things that make others happy. (And she’d quickly learn that I’m probably good for more than $40 a pop when I’m asked the right way.)

For some reason I feel inclined to prove to you that I was a Boy Scout. Above is my “Arrow of Light,” the last badge I received during an unremarkable career in scouting.

I’ll report back if I have any further encounters with Scout, but Child #2 tells me that she’s currently in Switzerland and I don’t have to close the blinds and shut off the lights every time somebody knocks on our door.

In my mind’s eye, I see Scout hiking in the Alps, blowing on one of those long Alpenhorns, eating chocolate and cheese by the fistfull, and then pulling aside some poor unsuspecting yodeling shepherd and selling him a bottle of “El Classico” hot sauce.

For, you know, Scout stuff.