One of my friends just complained about her undergrad student in her lab who was supposed to be her assistant. Her undergrad assistant was always late for appointments and he regarded the project as a fun, joking on it rather than really contributing himself to it. What shall we grad student do? As an important part of lab's function, undergrad training has been more and more people noticed. Not only in the grant application but also in the of professors' annual report, undergrad assistants have been demonstrated as an accomplishment. Thus, definitely we should have undergrads in our lab. But what is the function of them? Assisting or lagging? I believe most grad students would be happy to train them but a lot of undergrads leave the lab immediately after they get the recommendation letters from the professor, regardless how much time and energy we put in training them. In addition, some of them are not really studying how to do the research. Many undergrads want exclusively the "experience" and a recommendation letter from the professor. They are not really interested in the research.
How shall we deal with this kind of undergrad? Rely on them for our research? I dare not. You cannot expect they can finish the tasks as promised. Take drosophila for example, we collect virgins from bottles for crosses and bottles take ten days to contribute mature adults. Undergrad can easily 'forget' about the schedule though you told them several times to collect virgins ten days later. This way, the progress will be delayed by at least ten days.
It does not mean there is no undergrad really interested in the research and can organize everything perfectly fine. They flip the bottles in time to maxim the production of fly bottles and they can be very responsible for virgin picking. I do not know, do not know how to deal with them. Trust them, they might ruin your experiment. Do not trust them, I might miss a good assistant.
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