Shooting down the helicopter parent

I've heard a lot about these so-called "helicopter parents" in the media, but strangely enough although I work in public services I had yet to encounter one of these people who are unnaturally involved in the minutiae of their children's education until this afternoon, when a parent attempted to order an item from remote storage on behalf of her daughter. Unaware of the fact that we have extremely tight restrictions on who can pick materials up for whom and who is authorized to make requests for library materials on another's behalf, the parent and I got into a fairly Abbott and Costello routine about policy and procedures until she realized that she was better off telling her daughter to order the item from the Depository herself (which she was).

Fortunately this parent seemed in reasonably good humor about the whole thing, but I can see from a service point of view how things could degenerate fairly quickly, to the tune of "I pay so-and-so's tuition, so I think I can damned well order her books for her." I wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg?