I work at a driving school with a staff of four people, including yours truly. We get all kinds of clients, some of them are rich, most of them aren't, and the sheer number of ethnicities are mind-boggling. We get russians, polish, indians, arabs, asians, french, british, african-americans and latin-americans; you wouldn't believe how many scheduling errors we've made because two clients had a name like "Abhishek" or "Oleg." If you want to impress your customers, you have to get to know each and every one of them, by name, and keep tabs on their lives. If you do that, then your company can be assured that it is improving, and not interfering with, your customers' lives.
Most of our clients are perfectly normal people, and are a pleasure to work with. A small minority of our clients are neither normal, nor sane; that comes with the territory. For those kinds of people, we have rules; if you do not show up for a lesson, and you did not give us sufficient warning, you're going to be charged for that lesson. If you make the instructor's lives hell by making us pick you up near penn station or grand central, we will cut that time from your lesson. This is a driving school, not a limousine company. If you want to take the pre-licensing class, you will do so in a full class of eight or nine people; you will NOT get a one-on-one class with the instructor just because you're some VIP who expects preferential treatment.
Oh, and if you're trying to route everything through your secretary? Don't expect it to end well, because if there's TWO people (your secretary and me, the secretary for the driving school) handling the scheduling for the client and the instructor, one of us is going to mess up, guaranteed. "My people will call your people" does not work when you're trying to get a driver's license.
There are certain aspects of the process of getting one's license here in NYC that cause collective insanity. One is the scheduling of road tests; after taking the pre-licensing class, you (or I) will schedule the road test on a weekday between the hours of 9am and 4pm. Road tests never happen on weekends; the DMV is closed, and you can't bribe them enough to make them work weekends. You will need to take a half-day off from work for this road test, and whether or not your boss is cool with it, we can't make the process any shorter. And if, G*d forbid, you should fail your road test, do not expect any freebies. Our instructors have day jobs, and if they don't get paid, they're not going to work; same as you and me. I know it's expensive to take lessons in the city, but everything is expensive in the city; we have to pay rent for the office, we have car payments to make, gas to buy, and mouths to feed. If we could afford to lower prices, we would; lower prices mean more customers, so it's a win-win situation. That's why we offer some of the lowest rates in Manhattan as it is.
More to come later; I've got a client going into labor in the middle of her lesson.
Most of our clients are perfectly normal people, and are a pleasure to work with. A small minority of our clients are neither normal, nor sane; that comes with the territory. For those kinds of people, we have rules; if you do not show up for a lesson, and you did not give us sufficient warning, you're going to be charged for that lesson. If you make the instructor's lives hell by making us pick you up near penn station or grand central, we will cut that time from your lesson. This is a driving school, not a limousine company. If you want to take the pre-licensing class, you will do so in a full class of eight or nine people; you will NOT get a one-on-one class with the instructor just because you're some VIP who expects preferential treatment.
Oh, and if you're trying to route everything through your secretary? Don't expect it to end well, because if there's TWO people (your secretary and me, the secretary for the driving school) handling the scheduling for the client and the instructor, one of us is going to mess up, guaranteed. "My people will call your people" does not work when you're trying to get a driver's license.
There are certain aspects of the process of getting one's license here in NYC that cause collective insanity. One is the scheduling of road tests; after taking the pre-licensing class, you (or I) will schedule the road test on a weekday between the hours of 9am and 4pm. Road tests never happen on weekends; the DMV is closed, and you can't bribe them enough to make them work weekends. You will need to take a half-day off from work for this road test, and whether or not your boss is cool with it, we can't make the process any shorter. And if, G*d forbid, you should fail your road test, do not expect any freebies. Our instructors have day jobs, and if they don't get paid, they're not going to work; same as you and me. I know it's expensive to take lessons in the city, but everything is expensive in the city; we have to pay rent for the office, we have car payments to make, gas to buy, and mouths to feed. If we could afford to lower prices, we would; lower prices mean more customers, so it's a win-win situation. That's why we offer some of the lowest rates in Manhattan as it is.
More to come later; I've got a client going into labor in the middle of her lesson.
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