What to do when an instructor is out of line?

[Hotpuppy]

Not talking about dive shops specifically, but in any industry/business there are plenty of customers that are not worth whatever dollars they will take with them when they go.

Not saying that the OP necessarily falls into this bucket, but some customers just aren't worth it.

No offense taken, and you are 100% correct. For the record, I am a small business owner and I've been on both sides of this from a customer service perspective. I've fired customers that weren't worth the trouble.... I've dealt with high-maintenance customers... and I've recovered from employees who were out of line.

I try pretty hard not to be the high-maintenance, unprofitable, and thus unwelcome customer.

I have a pretty keen sense of what I expect from customers and what I do when my employees (contractors fall under the same umbrella here) are completely out of line.

I can assure you that if one of my employees cussed you out as a customer I'd be on the phone assuring you that I don't put up with this, don't condone it and will take steps to ensure it never happens again. I'd also be sure to ask you to give us another chance....

Unless I didn't want your business in which case I'd be polite and nothing more.

 

[Hotpuppy]

IMO you should have gone all the way up.

Good point.... That may have been a screw up for me. I made the best call I could under the circumstances... I decided I had been down for a while (30 something minutes) and that I should do a safety stop.

I didn't really pontificate about it either. I stopped, breathed, and made a plan and acted on it. As I carried out my plan I evaluated the situation and revised it as appropriate it.

 

[Hotpuppy]

Perhaps ... but I've had independent confirmation that at least some of the suppositions I made in earlier posts were, in fact, correct.

Which suppositions were correct?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Which suppositions were correct?

Via PM ... if you don't mind. Someone I know down there contacted me about my comments in this thread ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[iztok]

Via PM ... if you don't mind. Someone I know down there contacted me about my comments in this thread ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Fair enough. I for one would like to hear some info from the other side but understand your concern.

 

[redacted]

At this point any participation by the shop or instructor would make things even worse for them. People have already decided that they are 110% wrong and unsafe and all that. Even if they come on and say the reports are not really accurate and things didn't happen quite that way.

If they stay out of it, nobody knows who they are. Since they can't win by posting, why on Earth would they want to come on here and identify themselves so they can be crucified by name?

The shop could have won with a timely posting, owning up to the incident and acknowledging the shops errors and a credible assurance of appropriate action including the fair treatment of the OP and the instructor. That opportunity probably has already ticked away.

Even the instructor, with the right explanation and apology could probably have come through unscathed. Without a good reason for the delay, his opportunity has probably also expired.

It is just a matter of time before the shop ID will be known by those who want/need to know.

 

[Hotpuppy]

The shop could have won with a timely posting, owning up to the incident and acknowledging the shops errors and a credible assurance of appropriate action including the fair treatment of the OP and the instructor. That opportunity probably has already ticked away.

Even the instructor, with the right explanation and apology could probably have come through unscathed. Without a good reason for the delay, his opportunity has probably also expired.

It is just a matter of time before the shop ID will be known by those who want/need to know.

Heck, both of them could have won with me if they had owned up to the mistake, apologized, and assured me it won't ever happen again and explained a few steps taken towards that end. I might not have worked with this instructor again, but we all have bad days and make mistakes. The difference is that a professional can admit wrong, make corrections, and move forward. Of course a professional doesn't come unglued when something happens. This was a tough dive and it didn't go as planned. Some things could have been done differently, but heck isn't that why I'm in class? To learn what to do better and how to do it? It's not like I bolted and took him with me at an unsafe ascent rate and bent both of us. Heck even when something went wrong I stayed safe, conservative and acted at one step per time. I didn't even think to yell at him for losing me or realize how much danger I had been in.

I expected him to surface, ask if I was OK, ask what happened, and then for us to sit down and talk about it. At which point we could compose another plan and determine if we could still do the dives that day. PADI limits training dives to 3 dives per day, so there was a possibility that my becoming separated had blown a dive for the day and we would need to reschedule one of the dives.

The root problem is that the instructor came unglued, the Director of Training (who will become the course director but isn't currently) didn't see an issue with the ungluing, and then the owner apologized (which is appreciated) but went on to fluff the instructor as some sort of superstar. No mention of "we don't tolerate this" or "It will never happen again" or "We'd appreciate it if you would give us another chance and we value your business."

It wasn't like I wound up at this shop because they are the only option in town. I went to them because they are close to my house, have a good reputation, and I spent some time talking to the owner who assured me that they had very high standards and ran a first class operation.

 

[Hotpuppy]

Via PM ... if you don't mind. Someone I know down there contacted me about my comments in this thread ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I appreciate you helping me keep to the high road. As I've said previously the shop is welcome to participate, won't face repercussions from me provided they stick to the facts and opinions, and they know about the thread.

Btw, your info was helpful and I'll let you decide if you want to share any of it.

That said, I respect the shop and instructors choice to stay out of the discussion. I don't agree with it, but I respect it.

As AWAP said, it's just a matter of time. The shop will be forced to do one of two things....
Lie to customers or come clean individually when asked.

Think about it.... anyone who cares about this is going to ask the shop. "Hey, did you have an instructor yell at some diver who posted about it on ScubaBoard?"

The answers are very simple:
Yes - and such and such.
No - not us, we don't do that....we're blah blah blah and such and such.

A shop that really didn't do it is going to answer:
No, we wouldn't tolerate that for a second and we'd fire any instructor who yelled at a student. Period.

Diving is a small world.... word will get around without me being the source of it.

There were 14 witnesses in close to it and another crowd out further. I did well in the military when it came to being loud when I needed to be, so I can assure you that more than a few people saw and heard me rip up the instructor when I got tired of being insulted. They then saw him leave with another instructor, go up to the "shack" and spend 40 minutes on the phone. They saw me quietly pack up my gear, talk to several other people about what happened, apologize to the other diver/customers for losing my cool and telling them to have a safe weekend and have fun.

I'll move on and heed the advice here.... dive for fun, revisit DM a few hundred dives from now. I like that. I'll do my deep specialty when I'm somewhere warm, clear, and fun. I'll do it an environment I like and in conditions that stack the safety factors in my direction. I'll do it with a patient instructor who loves diving and wants to pursue the very safest diving possible. Because that is the only kind of instructor I want to train with!

 

[Jupiter31]

Based on what you have posted, you did nothing wrong - you also seem to have a sincere interest in learning and improving your skills. Would that more divers have this attitude

Read - then re read - NW Grateful Divers excellent long post about 400 rofl3: )pages back - really excellent advise.

I agree that you need to get out there and dive, and maybe put off the courses for a little while - you have enough training to get you through whatever diving you want to do for the next year or so. (I have PADI Deep and Wreck - probably would have survived w/out them - also have Rescue, which was excellent).

You need more dives and experience before DM - who told you that you were ready - the guys selling you the DM course right?

I could be wrong, but I don't like your shop at all - reading between the lines, they sound like a "card mill" (yeah, I know, thats what they sell).

But the main reason is they employ someone who would use that language to a student/customer, and continue to do so. The instructor also had the opportunity to "cool down" and still displayed this attitude - in 33 years in business, I'll grant you I've been tempted, but would never do something that wrong and that unprofessional, and suspect you would not either.

Time to change shops.

PS Don't expect miracles from PADI

 

[Hotpuppy]

PS Don't expect miracles from PADI

I don't expect miracles, but I also think they take this stuff seriously. I spoke to the lady in QA a few times and we've had some trouble getting email to behave. Nonetheless, at the end of the day PADI is a corporation. Shops and Instructors are licensees. If the licensee behaves in a manner that discredits the licensor their will be repercussions. If the licensee wants to lie about the behavior (which is a distinct possibility) they can do that and get away for now.

I'm just saying (to quote another wise soul) that this kind of stuff isn't a one-off. You don't decide to just lose your cool one day over one incident. There will be a pattern and what happened to me will be somewhere on the continuum.(sp?) The pattern will speak for itself and if there is a next time the result might not be ear pain and diver separation.

It's hard to hide dead or injured divers.

Oh, and I suspect PADI staff has already seen and read this thread. I'd be shocked if they hadn't. PADI produces stunningly good training material and has a crack marketing team that does some of the best targeted dialed-in and well researched stuff I've ever seen. I'm in the marketing business on the manufacturing side and I make a point of studying this kind of stuff. PADI is 110% integrated, dialed in and planned. They do an awesome job and that's part of the reason they dominate the market worldwide. The thread has 7500 views now which is an awful lot of eyeballs looking at it. I'd be surprised if the shop hadn't read it as well. They are smart folks too...