Their Kids Had a Bake Sale Together, But After the Sale Was Over, the Other Mom Claimed the Money Was Split Unfairly » TwistedSifter

The neighborhood bake sale is a right of passage for children everywhere.

But what happens when one child does all the work and the other parent tries to take what doesn’t belong to them?

In this Reddit post, it’s a good thing the author kept the receipts.

Literally.

A few weeks ago, my kids and their neighbors decided to have a bake sale.

We live in a tourist area with a lot of traffic and the children earn a lot of money.

This seems like a great place to make money for these kids!

I tell the kids that I should charge them for labor (I said I would help cook) and ingredients so they learn the concept of net earnings, but instead I will donate to their cause, and just to make back the money I lent them to make change.

I love seeing kids being entrepreneurial, working hard and being so excited about their success.

The kids are making money, they seem happy, it’s a win for now. After a few hours, the neighbor’s son decides he’s bored and wants to go home, so he tells my kid, “When you’re done, come and hand over half the money.”

Mine says, “Hey, that’s not fair, if you’re leaving, we should split the money now.”

Mind you, most of their sales came from my pastries.

The neighbor’s kid is very angry, but mine stands his ground, they split the money and the kid leaves in a rage.

Mine arrives a few hours later, after bringing home all the gear and cleaning, annoyed that the neighbor’s kid got mad at them.

It’s time for the adults to step in and ruin everything!

Then there is a knock at the door.

It’s the neighbor’s mother, with the child, who is still pouting. The mother is holding a receipt.

Mom explains that they bought a bunch of stuff for the bake sale, that it cost a lot of money and that it’s not fair for my child to make money off their stuff and that he should be compensated for what he bought.

The receipt lists a bunch of items that I immediately see they didn’t use (like 2 boxes of cereal when they used 1, napkins that I ended up providing), but whatever.

And it doesn’t matter that his son came home early and left mine to do the cleaning.

And it doesn’t matter that I’ve been baking batches of cookies all morning.

Be careful what you wished for mom, because the author also kept the receipts.

I’m irritated that they took what was a fun, joyful day where kids were making money by the armful, and showed up at my door, forcing me to engage in a super awkward conversation because they assume their kid can’t be wrong.

So I say, “Sure!” and go get my receipts.

Here we go.

I sit down and (in front of them, and out loud) calculate the cost of the lemonade and the cups used.

I calculate the cost of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, vanilla, and butter per batch of cookies, multiplied by the number of batches made.

I add baking soda for free (how generous). I even subtract the value of the remaining cookies.

Did I mention I made a lot of cookies? The neighbor boy has to pay $23.

They got pretty quiet all of a sudden.

I thanked the lady for making sure everything was fair and offered her a plate of cookies to take home.

She refused.

She came to the door expecting to make a profit and left a $23 lighter.

But hey, at least they got a plate of cookies for their efforts!

Let’s see what commenters on Reddit have to say about this.

The best comment says that everyone learned something that day.

Others praised this parent for raising an independent child who isn’t afraid to stand up for himself.

Many thought the idea was great, and one commenter even said they could have gone further.

Some shared stories of their own successful business ventures over the summer.

One comment said that the experience could have opened up a whole new career path for this child!

A few commenters mentioned that even though they acted immaturely at first, even the boy who came home early could have learned a valuable lesson in the end.

And one of the commentators was this boy, at the time.

The lesson here?

If you want to keep receipts, make sure you do your bookkeeping properly!

If you liked this story, read this one about a mother who was forced to take her three children with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting her dream job.