And That’s How The Fairness Cookie Crumbles

Children, Karma/Comeuppance, Neighborhood, Parents/Guardians, Reddit, USA | Friendly | CREDIT: snortgiggles | September 13, 2025

A couple of weeks ago my kids and their neighbors decided to have a bake sale. We live in a tourist area with high foot traffic, and the kids make a killing. I tell the kids I ought to charge them for the labor (I said I’d help bake) and ingredients so they learn the concept of net gains, but instead I’ll donate to their cause, and just to bring me back the money I lent them to make change. I love seeing the kids be entrepreneurial, work so hard, and get so excited at their success.

After a couple of hours, the neighbor’s son decides he’s bored and wants to go home, so he tells my kid:

Neighbor’s Son: “When you’re done, come by and deliver half the money.”

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

Mind you, the bulk of their sales was my baking.

The neighbor’s kid gets super angry, but mine sticks to their guns, they split the money and the kid leaves in a huff. Mine comes in a few hours later, having lugged home all the gear and cleaned up, annoyed that the neighbor’s kid got annoyed at them. Then I get a knock on the door. It’s the neighbor’s mom, with the kid, who is still pouting. The mom’s holding a receipt.

The mom explains that they purchased a bunch of stuff for the bake sale, it cost a lot of money, and it’s not fair that my kid is making money off their stuff, and that they should be compensated for what they purchased.

The receipt lists a bunch of items I immediately see they didn’t use (like two boxes of cereal, when they used one, napkins that I’d ended up providing), but whatever. And never mind that her son went home early and left mine to clean up. And never mind that I’d been churning out batches of cookies all morning.

I’m irked they’ve taken what was a fun, cheerful day of kids making money hand over fist, and shown up at my door making me engage in a super awkward conversation because they assume their kid can’t be wrong. So, I say:

Me: “Of course!”

And I fetch my receipts.

I sit down and (in front of them, and out loud) calculate the cost of lemonade, and 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 toss in the baking soda for free (so generous). I even subtract the value of leftover cookies.

Did I mention I made a lot of cookies? The neighbor’s kid has to fork over $23. They got pretty quiet all of a sudden.

Me: *To the neighbor.* “Thank you so much for making sure things were fair. Can I offer you a plate of cookies to take home?”

She declined.