Nothing ruins the joy of a successful kid’s bake sale faster than an adult stepping in with an entitled attitude.

One mom learned that the hard way when another parent accused her of not splitting the money fairly.

But when they took another pass through the receipts, it told an uncomfortable truth.

Keep reading for the full story!

You want to make things fair? I’ll show you fair.

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 told 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.

Instead, I said I’d donate to their cause and just asked them to bring me back the money I lent them to make change.

It warmed this mom’s heart to see the kids work so hard on something.

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 decided he was bored and wanted to go home.

Here’s where things started to get dramatic.

He told my kid, “When you’re done, come by and deliver half the money.”

Mine said, “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.

Finally, the neighbor kid gave up and sulked home.

The neighbor kid got super ticked, but mine stuck to their guns. They split the money, and the kid left in a huff.

Mine came in a few hours later, having lugged home all the gear and cleaned up, annoyed that the neighbor kid got upset with them.

But that wasn’t the last they’d see of this family.

Then I got a knock on the door. It was the neighbor’s mom, with the kid, who was still pouting.

Mom was holding a receipt.

The neighbor mom had a lot to say.

She explained that they purchased a bunch of stuff for the bake sale, it cost a lot of money, and it wasn’t fair that my kid was making money off their stuff. She said they should be compensated for what they purchased.

The receipt listed a bunch of items I immediately saw they didn’t use, like two boxes of cereal when they used one, and napkins that I’d ended up providing.

This really isn’t adding up for this mom.

But whatever.

Never mind that her son went home early and left mine to clean up. Never mind that I’d been churning out batches of cookies all morning.

I was irked that they’d taken what was a fun, cheerful day of kids making money hand over fist and turned it into an awkward confrontation because they assumed their kid couldn’t be wrong.

So I said, “Of course!” and fetched my receipts.

The two then go through all of the numbers.

I sat down and, in front of them and out loud, calculated the cost of lemonade and cups used.

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

I tossed in the baking soda for free — so generous.

I even subtracted the value of leftover cookies.

It’s starting to not look good for the neighbors at all.

Did I mention I made a lot of cookies?

The neighbor kid had to fork over $23.

They got pretty quiet all of a sudden.

I thanked the lady for making sure things were fair and offered her a plate of cookies to take home. She declined.

The end.

Bake sales are supposed to be sweet, not transactional.

What did Reddit think?

Accountability is a very important lesson to teach your kids.

This whole thing was a great teaching moment.

Maybe this should be the first and only bake sale they attempt.

This mom was the real villain of the story.

Always keep the receipts, folks!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.