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Imagine owning a small business and having a teacher reach out to you to ask if it’s okay for a student to send you a letter. Would you be okay with that?

In this story, one woman is in this situation and agrees to receive a letter from a student. However, the letter she receives isn’t what she was expecting at all. She actually thinks the whole thing feels like a scam.

She later talks to the teacher, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. Now, she’s not sure if she should respond to the student or report the teacher to the school superintendent.

Keep reading to find out why she found the letter so unethical.

AIO to complain to the superintendent about some teacher that sent me a weird letter?

So I (26f) own a very small business, and I was contacted a couple weeks ago on my business page by a teacher (confirmed by her public FB profile) asking for an address to send a letter to from a student in her english class for a school project.

I said what a lovely idea, and gave my address, though I was skeptical.

Someone tried to scam me before by using their real daughter’s name but a fake school project, and I knew it was fake for certain based on what they said.

She read the letters.

So anyways, I just got two typed letters in the mail late last week, one from the 7th grade teacher, and one from the student. And they both felt soo icky.

The one from the teacher had lots of caps, italics, and exclamation points, explaining the project to write a proper business letter and literally begging me to respond to the students letter, basically saying their success is in my hands and if I don’t respond they’ll feel like a failure.

Then of course the pretty short letter from the student talks about how much they love [a generic type of product I sell] and asks me to send them some, saying they can’t drive and“don’t have one of those fancy credit cards” to buy one etc, like really laying the guilt on.

It also had a lot of errors haha, things like “I,ve” and “don-t” and missing spaces and little but basic stuff like that, just keep in mind.

She decided to call the school.

So I talked to my bf and a teacher friend about it, and we all agreed it felt sorta icky and unprofessional, and I decided to call the school and ask about it. I wanted to make sure it was real (it was a real school, per Google), and if it was, sorta just say that it made me uncomfortable.

Well I called, got transferred around, and ended up in the principal’s mailbox. I just left a message with my name and number, letting her know I got a letter from one of her teachers and students and I wanted to talk about it because it sort of made me uncomfortable.

Maybe I’m being a Karen, idk, but how it was written just felt soooo icky, even especially more from the teacher.

I do substitute teach as well, and I felt it was so unprofessional and I honestly felt bad that the students were being taught in this way, it didn’t feel right to me.

This was shocking!

Well just a few minutes ago, I got a call back FROM THE TEACHER.

I was in shock lol I really wasn’t expecting that, and didn’t know what to say.

I started out just confirming it was real, and told her that it felt like a scam and she should keep that in mind because her students might not be getting responses because of that.

She was like oh I never meant to offend you, I’ve never gotten a complaint about it before, you don’t have to write back.

The teacher had a lot to say.

But I tried to say well that’s not really the point, I have no problem writing back, it’s more about the asking for free stuff part that didn’t feel right to me.

And she sorta went off on a rant about how this projects means a lot to kids and she has adults years later be like hey remember that letter, and sometimes kids need external validation, and if that means free products then great, your validation means more to them than mine does.

She also said stuff like they worked on this for over two weeks, and mentioned something about “…and on the seventh draft,…” but remember the simple typos.

And I looked, the date she asked for my address and the date on the letter was only 6 days apart, with a weekend in there.

The teacher seems to be contradicting herself.

And she also said “…and that’s why I don’t have the kids put their last names on there” but mine had a last name. So obviously she really wasn’t checking them as much as she claimed, and they hadn’t worked on it for that long.

She also said something about how she can only teach the kids ethics and then they go from there, but this didn’t feel very ethical to me?

And she said she never got a complaint, but then mentioned that multiple businesses have written her/the students back really nasty rude letters. So in my head I’m like, well those are your complaints??

She’s not sure what to do.

I’m just shook.

Firstly, that the principal passed on my info like that, and secondly by her response.

And now I don’t know what to do.

I wanted to respond to the kid, but I don’t like feeling so heavily guilted and pressured into giving her free stuff.

And seemingly the teacher has made it clear that if I don’t respond, they’ve failed in some way? it just feels sorta gross, I don’t think kids should be taught this way.

She’s weighing her options.

AIO if I tried to contact someone in the school system again, maybe the superintendent or something?

My HS english teacher friend is mad about it too and says don’t go back to the principal, go higher.

Should I just let it go? Should I respond to the letter? TIA

I would respond to the kid but refuse to send anything for free. I would also go above the principal to report this teacher’s assignment as unethical.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person offers some advice.

Another person thinks she should write a letter.

This person feels bad for the student.

Another person still thinks it sounds like a scam.

That teacher needs to give the students a different kind of writing assignment. It’s pretty messed up for her to encourage them to write letters to business owners asking for free stuff.

OP isn’t the only business owner who has complained, so this isn’t a one-off situation.

Going to the superintendent sounds like a good idea to me, but I would probably also reply to the student explaining why she’s not sending anything for free.