Food pantries would have been happy to have them.

Okay, this is a stupid story, but it's true, and somewhat (if not entirely) pertinent here:

I had nursed one child through the chickenpox (she had to miss her final 2 weeks of day camp that summer) when her younger brother came down with them. It meant at least another eight days or so of staying indoors during beautiful summer weather and keeping a whiny five-year-old entertained. I was kind of at the end of my rope. So when my husband called from work, he said to me. "Surrender; just turn on the TV, let him watch cartoons, and go to the store and buy some junky cookies." I surrendered, and left the older sibling to babysit while I ran to the store for ten minutes.

The TV was on, the cookies were opened, and all of a sudden my daughter ran in to interrupt my moment of peace. "I think we've won something, Mom!" And she handed me a slip from the cookie package. We'd won a year's supply of Oreo cookies, a case a month (three cases sent every quarter) for a year. It's the only thing I've ever won, before or since. When the first case arrived, a package was opened. It took a long time for them to disappear. By the time the second package was opened, no one even wanted them. When neighbors or delivery men came to the door, I tried to pawn off a package or two on them; but no one really wanted them. I had dozens of packages to figure out what to do with.

Finally, I decided we would pick up several cases and take them to the food pantry. My daughter was horrified: "Mom! You're supposed to give HEALTHY things to people who don't have enough to eat!" I explained that it was okay to give a few treats, too, and we headed off to the food pantry. They also gave me a kind of weird look, like "This is not exactly what we need most." But at least they accepted them, and I was rid of the devilish junk food. We did this at three-month intervals until the supply was gone.

I still laugh when I remember that horrible, unwanted prize, and how hard it was to get rid of the cookies.

When I had to use the food pantry in WI, there was a package of chocolate chip cookies in the box. It put a smile on my face. It's exhausting and depressing to be broke and hungry. Those cookies were like a little ray of sunshine for me.

They'd take them. I found the vanilla Oreos at K-Mart over a month ago and we still haven't opened the package. Those are hard to find and I like them better than the chocolate ones.

"Couldn’t you have purchased those 1100 cases — and donated them?”

Others could have done the same thing. It amounts to, "I think this is a good goal. I don't want to use my money for it. I think you should have used your money for it. And since you think you have better things to do with money that you earn or have donated to your non-profit, I'm going to try to shame you to make you do what I want you to do."

They shouldn't over-order. But to take delivery would both require paying for the goods themselves as well as transporting them to some other place. And would reduce the services that those selling the cookies tried to fund. The complainer doesn't like the organization, in all likelihood, so it's probably not an entirely altruistic bit of complaining.


This is probably not an uncommon occurrence, however. Perhaps the person complaining could start a non-profit whose only goal would be to raise money to purchase and transport over-orders to food pantries from the bakeries and other sources?