Boycott Oreo Cookies! That’s the headline on a Facebook post a nice lady shared on my page recently. She was upset that the CEO of the parent company proposed to close a plant in Chicago and move jobs to Mexico, and felt passionately that if I gave up Oreo cookies, I could make a difference.

It’s not going to happen.

There are several reasons that I’m not jumping onto this socially responsible bandwagon. Number One; I love Oreo cookies, and I don’t think I would give them up if they were made by terrorists.

Number Two: Getting on board with these causes really doesn’t accomplish much in the long run except making the participants feel warm and fuzzy about what they’re doing. (There’s nothing wrong with doing something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, as long as you do it for that reason.)

Number Three: I don’t get involved in other people’s causes. Those are their causes and God bless them, but just because they’re all worked up about it doesn’t mean I need to be.

Let’s take a look at the Oreo situation. It seems that Oreo cookies are made in a plant owned by a big conglomerate called Mondelez. The CEO is Irene Rosenfeld and the Facebook lady is upset with Irene.

It’s disturbing to me that Oreo cookies are made by a company named Mondelez.

I suppose if I had never known them as Oreos, I could love Mondelez Double Stuffs, but I doubt it. I just always thought there was an Oreo Cookie Company run by nice people my age who love making cookies.

That’s not the case, and Irene the CEO has decided it makes better sense to close the factory in Chicago rather than spend an extra $46 million a year to keep it open. The company says that if they made the same investment in Chicago that they’re making in Mexico, 300 jobs would be lost. That brings me to the jobs issue.

The plant closing means that 600 people will lose their jobs and the Facebook lady said that they’ll all be unemployed.

I doubt it.

There will probably be severance and a training program, help with resume writing, etc. And let’s face it, most of those folks are probably employable and will get different jobs, so they won’t be in the unemployment lines.

They probably have corporate names for the positions at the cookie factory, but I’ve got to think there’s some pretty cool jobs there at Oreo.

I’ll give you this. The guy or gal who operates the double stuffing machine probably won’t find that same job in Chicago.

Think about how cool the new job interview would go.

“So, tell me a little bit about what you did at the Oreo factory.”

“I operated the double stuff machine. The machine that puts the double stuffing in the Oreos.”

“YOU’RE HIRED. NAME YOUR SALARY!”

That guy or gal probably worked his or her way up over the years. I doubt you come in at entry level and get to operate the double stuffing machine.

He or she likely was a packer or something and then got an opportunity to move up to making the cookies, did that for a while and finally got promoted to the stuffing machine.

Being the double stuff machine operator was probably the dream job that everyone wanted, but my guess is that somebody named Tony had that job. Probably had that job for like 10, maybe 15 years. Loved going out to parties because when people asked, “What do you do,” he’d reply, “I operate the machine that puts the double stuffing in Oreo cookies.”

“This man’s drinks are on me!”

I feel badly for Irene.

In this day of complaining that women can’t get the same jobs as men with the same pay, she gets more than $20 million a year and has the power to eliminate 600 jobs and close a factory and gets a whole bunch of crap for it.

What’s a woman to do? There is no incentive to women to become CEOs if they’re going to be treated this way. They would be better off operating the double stuff machine.

This one simple Facebook post has become troubling to me. Just before I got the post, I went to the store to buy some Double Stuffs, and they were all out. The disappointment I felt can’t be conveyed in words.

Settling for a package of regular, I returned home.

A couple of days went by before I got the post about the boycott. Feeling I should check further, I did some research and got all the facts on the story, so that I could make an informed decision whether to boycott Oreo cookies.

I immediately opened the package and ate six cookies almost all at once. After a short pause, I ate two more. I was irritated that they weren’t Double Stuffs.