I present: your child's homework!

[Swordsman422]

So, after a long absence of sucky customers worthy of posting about, I finally found one this holiday season.

Enter Mom and Brat at 6:30pm, searching for parts to a school project that is (big surprise) due tomorrow! They have to present a diorama for the food chain of the Goldline Darter, a type of fish.

They knew nothing about the Goldline Darter, Percina aurolineata, found only in a few rivers in Georgia and Alabama, and preferring moderate to swift-flowing shallow channels characterized by the presence of cobbles, bedrock substrates, and profuse patches of Fusticia (water willow) and Podestemum (riverweed). The densitites of the populations have been decreasing over the last twelve years due to increased turbidity in the watershed upstream. I know all of this because they needed to find out what it ate and what ate it. And I was just foolish enough to use my internet access to help them out. Here's how it went.

Me: There is a lot of information on where it lives and what it looks like, but not a thing on what it eats.
Mom: nothing?
Brat: (playing with Rokenbok toys) Mom, this is fun! I want one!
Me: no, ma'am, I can't find anything so far.
Mom: Are you really looking!? This is due tomorrow and I don't want to have to go to a library to find this information!
Me: Any publications that do indepth studies of this fish are wildlife and biology journals. You can only get those at the library.
Mom: that's unacceptable! I'm not going to a library!
Brat: Mom! Look at this! Can I get one!
Mom: so you can't find anything. Great! Well, do you have a model of it or something?
Me: No. We won't have anything like that. We have a few sea creature toys in the bucket there (points) but we won't have a goldline darter.
Brat: Mommy, they have Webkinz! Can I have one?
Mom: None?
Me: Probably not.
Mom: This is ridiculous. *scoops through bucket* I can't believe you don't have what I need!
Me: We have modeling clay. She could make a model of one.
Brat: I don't wanna do that! Mom, can I get this kitty?
Mom: Here, we can repaint this little shark to look like one.
Brat: Just buy a toy of the fish, mom.
Mom: They don't have one.
Brat: That's stupid! Why not?
Mom: I don't know. It looks like we're just going to have to do it ourselves.
Brat: I don't want to. Can I get this webkinz kitty? I really want it.
Mom: No. We have to do your project.
Brat: But I want it!
Mom: C'mon, we're going to get this little shark and repaint it.
Brat: I don't want to! I want this kitty!
Mom: No! *turns to me* are you sure you can't find anything on what it eats? Or what eats it?
Me: Nope (actually, I have discovered that it was an invertivore, and ate snails, slugs, and worms, and was preyed upon by the Flattened Musk Turtle, Sternotherus depressus , but I was not going to relay that information to them)
Mom: well gee, thanks so much. We have this project due tomorrow and you can't help us at all! *pays for toy shark and calls Brat* c'mon! We've got to go over to the library! They aren't going to be any help here!
Brat: Mom, I don't want to go to the library! It's too late to do that! I want to go home and play my games!

So yeah, I know more than I need to know about the Goldline Darter now, and I have a funny feeling this child got an F. I hope that they learn how far effort goes, but they probably never will.

[matty]

Swordsman, you work in a hobby-store, right? I am just baffled to think that this mother thought that a hobby-store was the place to go when you need to do school projects or homework. It not just it's also

Edit: I realise now that they needed to make a diorama, so that makes some sense, but still, expecting you to do the work for them??

Still, at least you have a conversation starter about the Golden Darter up your sleeve now!!!

[Finduilas]

What I don't understand is why on earth they were so dead set against going to the library. We give away information for free, find the exacts books you need, even get them from other libraries (with more than one day's notice, that is) for you. All you have to do is come and pick them up!
Going to the library can be just like having someone do your project for you.

[MystyGlyttyr]

I get those every now and then up here at the paper. Unless they specifically need something out of our papers or I'm just in a spectacularly good mood, I shuffle them off to the library (seriously, it's like, four blocks away, why are you here?).

However, there was this one little boy, about seven years old, who was doing a report on snow. His mom was just perfect, standing by to offer little hints and suggestions, but basically letting him handle everything on his own. He informed me that he was writing a report for science class and needed to know how much snow we get in the area yearly and so forth, so on, and did I know if we had any back issues regarding snowfall? I was so impressed that I took a break to be personally interviewed regarding our local snowfall frequency, depth, etc. I even printed out a little Snopes-like story for him about pink and green snow that falls every once in a while for him to look through. Then he thanked me for the help and asked if he could quote me directly. Just too cute!

[walking with scissors]

Oh the things you could have made up about the Goldline Darter, which I'm pretty sure prefers Thai cuisine and has a neckbeard.

[Dave1982]

You'd be surprised at how often people go to hobby shops looking for help on their homework. The shop I frequent (and used to work at) every single year gets people coming in looking to either cheat on their project by buying a kit, or to pick the brains of the staff. Projects such as mousetrap cars, mini-trebuchets and catapults, and bridges that must hold x amount of weight. Every single year.

[allniter]

However, there was this one little boy, about seven years old, who was doing a report on snow.
<snip>
Then he thanked me for the help and asked if he could quote me directly. Just too cute!

One question: Know if he's got a twin brother up for adoption?

[Listerfiend]

I also get tons of people that come in expecting me and my associates to do their kids' homework for them (craft store). The sad things is that the kids often don't even come along and the parents just do the project for the kid.

I had a woman that came in last night wondering where our "section on Indians" was (I wanted to tell her, "well the Cherokee aisle is that way, and the Iroquois aisle is behind that one..."). I called up one of the associates to kind of walk with her around the store, seeing as she's extremely creative and is good at figuring out stuff like that for people. So the associate comes up, and the woman had a library book and is just floundering--she's pointing to things, but not really saying what it was that she had in mind, was willing to spend, wanted to do... My associate and I kept giving each other glances of "wtf?!" when the customer wasn't looking. So she basically expected us to think for her and pull the supplies out of our asses so she didn't have to do any work. What's more, she thought about doing a spear that was in the book, and asked if we had any "sticks." My associate told her that we didn't have anything that looked all that organic, but we did have dowel rods. It took about two minutes of bickering to convince her that yes, dowel rods *are* wooden sticks. The woman ended up walking away because she was fed up with our inability to read her mind (she walked away muttering something about "useless" and how she "walked through every aisle in the store and was unable to find anything").

In the end she got a really thin dowel (maybe half an inch wide), some curling ribbon, and some feathers. I was left wondering if she *wanted* her kid to get a D on the project. I remember having to do a project like that in school, and I had my uncle help me out. We sawed off a little tree limb, split it, found a rock which we shaped with a belt sander, and tied the rock into the stick with leather to make a really bad-ass hatchet. Overboard? Probably. But did I get an A on the project? Hell yes.

[MrSunshineState]

I hope the little brat failed.

[Alpha Strike]

The whole idea that you'd go to a store (crafts or otherwise) and realistically expect that the staff are there to do your kid's homework is beyond stupid.

I can't even begin to imagine how you connect customer service with "Do my kid's homework." Insanity.

[Slow-Jo]

wow what a jerk! what the heck was she thinking?
should have just given her a load of bull. tell her that the fishes biggest preditor was spiders that swim underwater, and that the fish is known to attack large animals during mating season.

[HawaiianShirts]

The whole idea that you'd go to a store (crafts or otherwise) and realistically expect that the staff are there to do your kid's homework is beyond stupid.

I can't even begin to imagine how you connect customer service with "Do my kid's homework." Insanity.

How about having computer department staff doing YOUR OWN homework for you. I have two types of customers that do that.

Every year, at about the same time, freshmen from the local university come in with a worksheet from their computer literacy classes. Instead of doing the research themselves, they pretend to be shopping for a new system and taking notes on what kind of computer we'd recommend. Yet they use terms they obviously don't understand, like telling me they're interested in a notebook while looking at the monitors display or asking me what software bundles come with the computers followed by a question of what software is.

Then we have lazy parents or lazy college students who ask us questions about software and websites. They want to know if there are any websites where they can download term papers for free (because apparently they can only find the pay-for-papers sites) or if software exists that will help them write papers (some just want editing help while others want to enter a topic and page requirement and wait for the printer to spew out their completed assignment).

As for the OP, this is just another one of those examples of poor parenting. These are becoming disturbingly frequent. I can only hope there are actually more good parents than bad and I'm only noticing the bad.

[auntiem]

Gah, we used to get this all the time. Kids would call asking all kinds of questions about a country, best time to go, how much it would be. Basicly, wasting my phone time to do their homework. Once I figured out that they were calling from class (!) I had the kid put the teacher on the phone and reamed her out. She didn't realize that by wasting my phone time she was taking money out of my pocket. Part of the problem is people are so used to information at their fingertips that they don't want to "hunt" for information.
The whole point of assignments like this are to learn how to do research. I loved doing research (maybe I was a weird kid) so I would have the Britanica and any other book I could find spread out on the floor. If the diorama couldn't be built with popsicle sticks and craft paper it wasn't getting made in my house (no trips to the craft store for spendy supplies).

[Listerfiend]

The whole point of assignments like this are to learn how to do research. I loved doing research (maybe I was a weird kid) so I would have the Britanica and any other book I could find spread out on the floor. If the diorama couldn't be built with popsicle sticks and craft paper it wasn't getting made in my house (no trips to the craft store for spendy supplies).

Hell yeah! I was like you, then. Some of my favorite places as a kid (and now) were libraries and museums. I'm just appalled at the woman who was refusing to go to the library. Why would you spend money on books and whatnot when you can do *free* research at the library with people whose jobs depend on helping others find information? It makes too much sense for SCs.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Mom: well gee, thanks so much. We have this project due tomorrow and you can't help us at all! *pays for toy shark and calls Brat* c'mon! We've got to go over to the library! They aren't going to be any help here!
Brat: Mom, I don't want to go to the library! It's too late to do that! I want to go home and play my games!

With that kind of attitude toward schoolwork, I sincerely hope the brat failed.

This can't be the kind of thing that was just sprung upon her by her teacher

Oh the things you could have made up about the Goldline Darter, which I'm pretty sure prefers Thai cuisine and has a neckbeard.

"The goldline darter lives on a diet of Big Macs, blue M&Ms, discarded plastic six-pack holders and Milwaukee's Best Ice, commonly referred to as Beast Ice. Its main predators are the Outer Slobovia Flatulence Owl, the Spotted Italian Bear-Rabbit and Slimey the Wonder Eel"