If co-workers can hawk their stupid kids' band candy to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the office, I see no reason why people shouldn't also have the option of buying your delicious pickles. (They are delicious, right?)

Also, it appears mudpuppie is fast becoming Aunt Bee.

At my work place, it would be odd, because people don't sell things here, as far as I've seen.

I think we have a ban on selling things/raising charity money here, at least publicly. At my last job it would have been AOK though.

Was going to suggest getting a table at a nearby farmers' market or flea market. But then I realized that, at least here, it wouldn't fly, because stuff has to be prepared in an inspected commercial kitchen.

(What about having a pickle party? A preserves swap night? A briny Meetup?)

No selling in this workplace either. Sorry.

I wouldn't mind if you did that where I work.

I wouldn't bring the jars in to sell, that would be weird (shades of trunk cookies) but if you went with preordering it would feel OK, at least in the places (tech and media) were I've worked

Present this like a little side business you are running: let your potential customers know what you are offering, deliver the goods in a discrete fashion only after an order is placed. Perhaps there's an opportunity at the lunch break to allow coworkers to casually sample your product, no hard sell or big presentation. This is how my side-business-running coworkers have managed to sell everything from pot to Tupperware without coming off on the wrong foot.

I also hate it when co-workers bring in stuff to sell (usually for kids).

However, I think it would be okay if you presented sorta how you did here. Maybe send around an email that says "I have a bunch of pickled stuff I need to give away. If you want some let me know--the only thing I ask is that you give me $2 to cover the cost of the jar."

I'd find it odd. It's one thing to buy stuff for charity/Scouts, it's a whole 'nother thing to buy stuff that will directly benefit a co-worker however minimal it may be. That said, I worked in offices where at least one person sold Avon stuff, which is a similar situation (a co-worker making money), and didn't think that was odd. Hrm. So conflicted!

This would be odd, but mullacc's approach seems OK.

Thanks for the feedback, y'all. I'm thinking now it's a bad idea, so I'll have to come up with some alternative. Maybe a pickle stand in the front yard?

Farmer's market? Sell them to one of the booths at cost and let them make whatever profit on it? (I dunno how these things work.)

Where I work, people often bring in things to sell and, as long as they aren't doing things like sending out broadcast e-mails via the internal mailing lists, it's generally considered OK. I did the selling-chocolate-for-the-school thing recently and just put them on top of the fridge with a sign saying what they were for and trusted people to pay for what they took. Because I wasn't hassling people or asking them to buy anything, it was all cool. People (including me) get very upset when staff do the broadcast e-mail thing, though, especially when it's a for-profit (even if nominally) thing, rather than a school/charity thing. For school stuff, generally everyone with kids will buy something, because they know their turn will come and taking it to work is a low-stress way of getting the stuff sold.

One of my employees sells Avon. She's pretty good about selling only to her friends/family, but there's some gray area there, and, honestly, I'd rather she just didn't do it on the clock at all, but, yeah, you pick your battles.

There is someone in my office who has been trying to sell eggs at $3 per dozen by leaving them in the common fridge and putting up a small sign. I think a few dozen have sold, but business isn't booming.

Ditto clarifying that you're covering the materials cost, and maybe write up a little story about them (the process, the flavor, great with x), and offer to teach others how to do this.

Do you have a snack room with a fridge? I'd put a jar of pickles in there with the label: FREE PICKLES FOR THE PECKISH - contact mudpuppie for more.

That way everyone gets to taste the pickles first. I'm picky about my pickles. My father-inlaw pickles a lot, and I don't fancy his, but I luuurve his jams.

one of the engineers here at BigPharmaco sells honey from his beehives for $8/pint every summer. He just puts up a flyer in the break room and people email him with orders.

As far as I know it's fine, and he sells tons of the stuff; I buy some every year.

so, you know, it varies.

I'd say, if you do this, go the "flier in the break room" route, instead of actually bringing them in.

I would LOVE to buy a jar of homemade pickles for $2 from someone I knew .. I would think it was very neat and interesting that you made them and I absolutely get the idea of covering the cost of the jar. I'd probably buy a few and give them to my friends and say, "hey, this cool person at work made these, they're really good, have some!"

As long as they're not sweet pickles which I consider a crime against nature.

I think methodology is key here.

I mean, you should find out about company policy, but most places have a bulletin board or something in the lunch room / break room where people post all kinds of stuff, and BigPharmaCo is similar to all the other places I've worked at in this regard.

Our breakroom bulletin board is currently full of stuff like "guitar lessons $15/hour by [Quality Manager's son]" and "FREE TOMATOES / ZUCCHINIS; email [ScienceDude@BigPharmaCo.com]" and "FOR SALE: 2003 Jeep Cherokee; call [Environmental Operator] @ 555-666-7777" and so on. Of course, it's a passive solution and may not garner as much traffic as the "harder sell" methodology, but you maybe surprised. It's the lo-fi office version of Craigslist; aka "how we did shit back in the '70s before the Internets came along".

I do the equivalent version of this by posting stuff on my status on Facebook. Surprisingly effective; I've sold all sorts of spendy used cycling related and electronic crap this spring. Granted, Facebook isn't for everybody.

The typical office scenarios of selling Avon / GS cookies / your kid's booster club candy bars is entirely another matter IMO; especially if the seller is going "door-to-door" / direct selling from their desk or whatever. Our HR dept. directly nixes that sort of thing at BigPharmaCo, mainly because it's intrusive and annoying and also it's actively doing completely non-work-related stuff for personal gain on company time, etc.

Would a local food pantry take them?

I worked at a homeless shelter, and the policy was to accept homemade food so that people would feel like they were helpful, but we weren't actually allowed to redistribute the food.

Wow, aniola , that's a little sad. Everyone knows homemade foods are yummier.

I agree. There's so much food that gets wasted due to cultural expectations. Grocery stores locking dumpsters full of food instead of distributing it before it gets there; everyone worried about getting sued. The line between homemade and commercial can seem so arbitrary. I know the theory is that commercial kitchens get inspected, but still.

On the other hand, maybe these things save someone some sort of really bad food poisoning?

Our office culture is pretty friendly and casual, so it might not be representative, but our CFO sells homemade maple syrup by the bottle, one of our salespeople sells blueberries once a year, several others have done the candy-bar-for-schools type thing, and there's occasional emails for other miscellaneous sales/donations stuff. So in our office you'd be well within the norm. In fact, you'd probably be asked by more than a few people to do it again next year.

But, like I said, our office is pretty low-key and casual.