An email came in last week, to the info address from our studio website, and I asked Heidi to respond to it because I've been moving and am focused on non-studio matters. When I focus my energies outside of the studio, I find that my communication skills erode and my usually infinite capacity for being patient is also diminished.
Heidi called the potential new client and learned about her many years of dance in New York and several years of Pilates experience with a Romana teacher in Princeton, New Jersey.
Heidi cleared her for mat class - our classes are not "open classes" so new clients are not allowed to come to class without being screened.
She'd like to join a semi and it took Heidi a while to educate her that our studio doesn't run like most others; we don't have semi's new clients can simply join, we match semi partners as if it were a dating service and what they need out of the work is their #1 must have, we end up with matches so solid they usually last for years, we have a max of 3 but prefer 2. Beyond semi's, our standing book is so solid that we're essentially full, we only have a couple of mid-day slots that aren't standing appointments and they always fill with regular clients whose schedules make a one-time shift or for clients who want to fit in an extra session.
The new client agreed to do mat classes with the hope of something opening up for her to resume equipment work.
She came to the 12:15 class on Tuesday afternoon and her description of herself as severely injured was, indeed, technically correct (RA disfiguring her hands plus ankle and foot surgeries including an ankle replacement) but she's a beautiful mover, she admits she's lost her abdominal strength with the life events that brought her to Seattle (next on Oprah . . . ) and both Heidi and I were delighted to have her in class and as a new client.
Then, it happened.
She did something unexpected, something I feel is inappropriate and it caused me to speak to her harshly in front of a studio full of clients.
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