i'm sorry... YOU're pissed off at ME??

i got a bit pissed off this morning. one of 'my' teachers regularly updates me on her students - face to face as opposed to filling in the register or calling me when i'm at the office. instead, she chooses those times just before i teach, when i'm not in managing mode. anyway, she's been complaining about this one student for a long time now: she keeps cancelling, she's not really interested, and the way the cancels 3-4 lessons in a row means that the 3-4 lessons she did have in a row are wasted as they have to start all over every time (she's got a really low level). the only reason this student has any lessons left is because said teacher is generous with the 24-hour cancellation rule, which she's entitled too, but once in a while is one thing; every time is another (especially for her - she's the one not getting paid!)

anyway, i'd said i'd discuss this with N., which i did, and we agreed that i should let the HR know about this person. after all, they were forking out for another round of lessons, which would apparently be totally wasted on her and the teacher had already told me she certainly wouldn't be teaching those new lessons once this set was over. i just needed one more piece of info from the teacher, who of course only got back to me this morning (face to face) as i was, once again, obviously doing something else. when i explained what i was doing, she got really pissed off. she told me i really couldn't go around treating students like children and this was really not the way to go about it, and this student was lovely and doing fine.

uh... did i miss something here? i asked her to calm down and pointed out that she'd been the one complaining about this student and that she'd obviously reached a certain level last week, giving me all that extra information, that warranted some action on my part. not knowing what else to say (i was pretty pissed off by then), i told her i'd look into it again. but really, i'm working for the company, not for the student. my clients rely on me to tell them when students miss too many classes, and this is enforced with everyone else. in some companies, there are even mandatory attendance rates of up to 80%! if a student's contract drags out for over 6 months instead of 3, one can safely say that we're nowhere near a good attendance rate. and when reasons are, according to the teacher, something on the lines of having a long weekend, then, i'm sorry, but that doesn't seem acceptable to me. while i can certainly tone down the email, they still need to know.