Neighborhood Cookie Lady Shut Down By Complaint

Most of us would love it if someone met us every Friday with a fresh-baked cookie on our way to work, but a group of school children are now bereft of their weekly treat because their school has canned the local "cookie lady."

"One parent complained and the school district has to be responsive to that," the cookie lady said.

According to Mommyish, 15 years ago Anne Tabat, a Minnesota woman with three kids at the local school, decided to thank the kids' bus driver with some homemade cookies. Figuring she could not hand out cookies in front of a busload of children, she made enough for all the kids as well. Then every Friday for the past decade and a half, she was waiting with the cookies for the driver and the kids, but the cookie train stopped this week after an anonymous complaint but an end to the business.

"I think it's somebody who just didn't bother to get to know me and I think that's what the sin is here," said Tabat, who says she started handing out cookies in an attempt to foster a spirit of small-town neighborliness in her suburban community.

"Look at the way these houses are designed here," she said. "They're not designed with a friendly neighborliness community in mind. I haven't been in most of the houses in my neighborhood. People live such busy lives; you don't talk to your neighbors, you don't know your neighbors."

But someone complained, and when Tabat showed up that Friday with the cookies the driver said the kids weren't allowed to have them anymore, and he didn't want to eat in front of them. Tabat said she could understand that maybe there was an issue with food allergies, but nobody approached her to talk about it before putting the kibosh on the cookies.