Last year I had a pupil who couldn’t afford her lessons and she cancelled a lot of them. In fact, between July and the beginning of October she cancelled six lessons – that’s about once a fortnight, or every other lesson (and there were cancellations before July, too). It’s also worth noting that because she was saving for a holiday, then went on that holiday, there was a period where she had no lessons anyway, which makes the cancellation rate even worse.
I knew she was strapped for cash and I never had a go at her about this. Even on the occasions when the cancellation was with less than 48 hours notice I didn’t charge her. She was a nice girl, good driver, nearly ready for test, etc.
At the start of October I got a text message cancelling yet another lesson. My mobile phone uses Outlook and text messages are shown as previews. I saw the usual ‘got to cancel’ and ‘sorry’ phrases and left it at that. What I hadn’t seen was the request lower down the message to book one for 25th October. Obviously, I didn’t reply.
On the morning of 25th October I got a text asking where I was. I replied that we had nothing booked… but later on it dawned on me to look at her previous texts to see if I’d missed anything, and that’s when I discovered this request at the end of her last cancellation. Although it wasn’t my fault I apologised profusely. But she refused to acknowledge my texts or phone calls, and I gave up.
Just to summarise for a moment:
- the pupil cancels lesson after lesson over a total of maybe 10 months
- this eventually creates a huge mix up resulting in her thinking she’s booked a new lesson and me not having any knowledge of such a booking
- this is all on top of the lost money (£140 between July-September, plus lost bookings with other pupils) and messed up diary her cancellations have caused me in that whole period
Well, I found out from another pupil this morning that her mother said I had ‘ let her daughter down ‘.
I was really pissed off on hearing this. What made it worse was that I was out with another pupil yesterday and I saw this girl walking down the street with her friend. Young people are extremely bad at hiding their feelings or behaving in a mature way: it was obvious she had seen me and even more obvious she was pretending she hadn’t. Better still, her friend turned round to have a look after they’d walked by. So it couldn’t have been plainer that she was behaving like a spoiled brat.
This is one of the downsides to the job, unfortunately.