I didn't see this first time I posted and I feel like it would be much better here.

Original post:

I'm sorry if this isn't appropriate here because I technically was never employed. It's 3 AM and I'm just quite upset and can't sleep.

Some background:

My dad said he would give me an "internship" at his "company" in China.

To give you a sense of how truly awful they are at CS, my mom ordered me to explain to my dad how Git/github works after the fact because he was furious that I did not "provide him with the final result" even though the entire repository is actually literally public (I could link it but I won't for privacy).

He told me to build what basically amounted to an unholy conglomeration of an RSS feed and web crawler. No further information was given — they didn't even know that RSS existed until I told them. Also, it had to be able to aggregate relevant list-like objects from any arbitrary website using the website without using APIs. (Like if you searched "peanut butter" with target "amazon.com" it would automatically give you results, but it would also work for Freelancer.com and Bobsfreshpeanutbutter.net etc etc.)

Mentioning that I didn't know what his goals were or that some of the requests were impossible in the time frame given provided my skills and suggesting ways to better define his requests made him yell at me about "disobeying orders" and how I would have been fired at "any competent company".

They didn't register me as an employee or intern or anything in any official way or form, barely interacted with me inside or outside of work, and gave me no other instructions. I also couldn't go home because China.

So a few questions.

1) What should I do when an actual employer acts like this?
2) Are any real companies like this, or is it just because it's _____?
3) Was I in the wrong? Explaining all this to my mom, she says that I had a bad experience because it was my fault for not communicating. Or something.
4) ?!?!?!?!