Adulting Is Even Harder When No One Lets You Do It
I work for a company that does online education. We have career programs and a high school that caters to adult learners and traditional-age students.
This caller wasn’t exactly mean, but she had a really hard time getting anything I was saying. She wanted to sign her son up for online summer school classes. First, I had to explain the concepts of online learning, ebooks, and paying tuition to her multiple times. During enrollment, she didn’t want to give me her son’s phone number because he never answers it, and he doesn’t have his own email, so I should just use hers. This was odd but workable.
Then, I asked for his date of birth, and it was last month — his eighteenth birthday. This meant he was an adult and needed to enroll himself. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t just enroll her son — who was home, so he could’ve come to the phone, but she didn’t want to wake him!
I tried explaining several different ways that eighteen-year-olds are legal adults, but it was like she had never heard of the concept. Eventually, she just gave up.
That’s probably a good thing. If her son can’t even be bothered to wake up in the middle of the afternoon, let him pay for his own school.