I went to Gloucester this weekend with the head and assistant head coaches of Buxton swim club for my first masters swimming competition (see other blog for gory details).
En route we talked about alsorts of things and one was a certain amount of bitterness from Gary. He's a personal trainer by profession, of which part of his job is coaching the kids. The other (more significant in terms of livelyhood) part is personal training for a variety of clients. Now what gets on his back is people who treat him like !@"£, those who ring up 10 minutes before their appointment and say sorry I can't come because (God I don't know they're having their toe nails cut). It's not that they don't show up, but it's that most neither plan a head nor expect to renumerate him for his wasted hour...
I don't understand, may be that's because how I was brought up, but sometimes you clearly can't turn up when expected at short notice. But I would always honour my debts in those cases - because it's somebody else's livelyhood. Now in Gary's case most people who offer to pay for missed sessions, he either waves his fee, or accepts half (mostly the former), but that doesn't mean you shouldn't offer does it?
