Kevin Kwak’s Blog

I was minding my own business pumping inexpensive gas when a young teenager, appears to be a junior high student, walking around the gasoline station trying to sell his goodies.
He greeted with a smile hoping to sell one or more of many edibles he had available. He said he was from some organization which I didn’t quite catch because I told him quickly, “sorry, I’m not interested.”
“Oh okay, have a nice day sir,” and he walked over to another asile in the station.

As I drive away from Mobil, I really felt sorry for all those elementary and junior high school kids that actually go out and sell those candy bars and other not so cheap goodies.

Why are they wasting their precious free-time selling junks for those product companies when they can be either having fun or doing homework. Is it because if they sell a certain amount of the products, they are promised to receive great prizes and other enticements as their total sales reach a higher level? Or is it because they really do want to support this so called non-profit organizations and/or their school (ha! you got to be kidding me)? To say the least, these kids are really being exploited, earning less than a minimum wage if you do the math.

I remember my elementary and junior high school days when our class was taken into a dark auditorium with the center stage all lighted with decorations. If I can remember correctly, there are different parts to the events, all leading to enticing little kids to spend their afternoon selling the sponsors’ products. There was this one part during the event where a glass case size of a telephone booth was centered in the auditorium stage. Sitting back at the auditorium, we wondered what it was for. Then one of the speaker stepped up, said some mumble jumble and turned on a switch, the whole auditorium was suddenly cheering. A pile of actual dollar bills which were laid on the bottom of the glass case was now blowing all around inside the case. The idea was, the top sellers had a chance to go inside the case and within 30 seconds or so, they get a chance to pick up as much bill as they possibly can and what they grab as what they keep.

I can only bet that there were a maximum one or two $100 and mostly dollar bills and the odds of the little boy or girl able to grab a bunch, very slim (unless they learn a technique, maybe cover the electric blower with your butt and snatch all the bills).
There were many cool prizes that all kids would really want but only dreamed of.

So getting back to the story, here is this kid at 8PM (summer time so the sun was not set yet) hopelessly wandering around hoping to sell this expensive candies and goodies. I hope that kid gives up and spends his time on better things or do find kind and generous buyers who ‘donates’ their money.

But think about it, who actually wins from all this. Win-win-win/loss/loss situation.
The company/organization wins, the school wins, the student either wins or loses, and the generous buyer loses. Whoever created such technique in selling their products by exploiting the elementary school was a smart business man.