GAH! What will it to take to get RID of her?!

[Misty]

How do you get rid of a regular customer who is such a PITA that your company would be MUCH better off without them?

I teach English in Japan to both children and adults. One adult class is called "voice," which is for high level students. Instead of a regular English lesson, a group of students sit around having conversations in English about pop culture, current events, etc, while the teacher acts as a moderator.

"Yuki" lived in the U.S. for a couple of years as a University student, thinks the U.S. is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and is constantly talking about going back. She comes to the school five or six days a week and stays for hours, attending all voice sessions. Some words that can be used to describe her include "whiny," "argumentative," "opinionated," "self-absorbed," and "easily offended," so you can imagine how much of the day goes in voice. All of the teachers despise her, and she's driven away a lot of students; on a typical Saturday voice used to have 10 or 11 students, but now it's down to maybe 2 or 3.

Whenever she gets upset she threatens to quit, but of course she never does. She only has a part-time job (her parents pay for English school) and a loser musician "boyfriend" she never sees. She's not going anywhere.

All of the teachers think things would be much better if she was gone, but of course management doesn't see it that way. Using typical management logic, they are determined to hang onto a paying customer at all costs, even if that person is driving away several other paying customers. We're screwed.

So I ask you, have you ever been in a similar situation, but managed to get rid of the object of your affliction? How did you do it?

[hinakiba777]

I can honestly say I haven't been in a situation like that. But it sounds really sucky. And it makes me rethink my desire to go teach English in Japan.

[bainsidhe]

Holy cow, those lessons must be costing her parents a fortune! Which on second thought, is probably why she's kept around. Without firm evidence proving that she's the direct cause of business loss, the powers-that-be won't get rid of her. After all, they don't deal with her directly.

I've always thought it would be neat to teach in Japan. I know Osaka wasn't right in the midst of the tsunami, but the country is still struggling and our thoughts are with you guys.

[underemployeed]

well, it depends because she is "such a great student", convince her parents to sent her back to the US to teach her even more advanced stuff..... it might by you a few months

It is sort of like shitty coworkers, they are hard to fire, but promoting them makes them someone else's problem

[Hanzoku]

Provide management with before-Yuki and after-Yuki attendence numbers. Show them any/all exit complaints that involve her.

Raise her 'tuition' fees to cover (some) of the lost revenue from everyone she's driven off with her whining. Either you'll get rid of her, or you'll make all your money from her. Either way is a financial win for the company, and hopefully the crazy-high fees will convince her to move on.

[scruff]

suggest she goes to US to teach Japanese?

[bankworking]

Can you get any of the students who have left because of her to complain to management?

[emax4]

Provide management with before-Yuki and after-Yuki attendence numbers. Show them any/all exit complaints that involve her.

Raise her 'tuition' fees to cover (some) of the lost revenue from everyone she's driven off with her whining. Either you'll get rid of her, or you'll make all your money from her. Either way is a financial win for the company, and hopefully the crazy-high fees will convince her to move on.

Awesome! I've explained a similar solution elsewhere regarding something like this. I would go to the management and ask, "Would you feel better and more prosperous keeping one bad customer and losing much more paying customers, or would you prefer keeping a greater number of paying customers while losing one simple customer who causes other students to leave?" If management can't grasp that, perhaps it's long overdue to get NEW management in there.

I really like the idea of raising the tuition fees to cover the loss of other students attending the class. What if the teachers just give her a diploma to get her the hell outta there and tell her that there's no advance class? Or explain that she needs to enroll is a social interaction class where she's privately re-educated to behave properly and she can't pass without it (and her money isn't refundable)?

[Jester]

So I ask you, have you ever been in a similar situation, but managed to get rid of the object of your affliction? How did you do it?

Under advice from counsel, I am invoking my Fifth Amendment right to not answer that question on the basis that it may incriminate me.

[MoonCat]

Do you, as the teacher, have the authority to basically tell her "sit down and shut up"? Maybe if she's corrected enough times, she'll either learn to watch her mouth or stop coming.

[Misty]

UPDATE: Yuki has been banned from voice! She has also been banned from group lessons, because thanks to her behavior over the past two years, her mere presence intimidates the other students. The only way she can continue to come to the school is if she takes private lessons, which are very expensive; I doubt she'll be able to afford to come here much longer.

Today I stayed late because she specifically requested me for a private lesson, and I obliged. Although she has managed to alienate all of the other teachers and staff, truth be told, I've never had a problem with her, probably because I've only been seeing her once a week for the past five months while the other teachers have been putting up wither her five times a week for two years. Also, when Yuki and I talk, it's usually just the two of us; voice has always been quiet on Wednesdays (as opposed to Saturdays), so the low attendance can't really be blamed on her.

I know she brought this on herself, but I can't help but feel sorry for her. She still hangs around all day, even though she only takes one or two classes. I mentioned before that she has only a part-time job and a loser boyfriend; she talked about going back to America again, but apparently she's been saying that for almost two years now. She literally has nothing going on in her life except this school.

She was a thorn in the sides of my coworkers for so long I can't tell them how to feel, but as for myself...seeing her now, so sad, lonely, and pathetic, I just can't kick her while she's down. She's being punished, so that's good enough for me. I'll keep giving her fun, happy conversation until she can't afford it anymore.

[emax4]

I'm glad everything worked out for you (and your coworkers, students, and the school in general).

[KiaKat]

Although the situation has been resolved, I actually have some advice, as I've been in this situation a few times.

Train the customer. If there is a teacher to moderate, then every time she starts getting argumentative, offensive, or generally shitty, the teacher should shut her down. She may be a paying customer, but so are all the others. If the conversation starts going in a direction where she dominates, treat her like a kindergartner: "(Yuki), other people have just as much a right to speak. Let's hear from them. We can come back to you in a little bit."

I had one customer that would repeatedly come in, take up all our time, distract us from other customers, and only buy a single $10 bottle of wine or sake. He would insert himself into our space, try to come around the counter to see what we were working on, try to go into the fridge to get wine himself (biiiiig no-no, our fridge is DANGEROUS), and generally act as though he were another employee. I started keeping the counter between us, would place a stool in front of the fridge when I saw him chaining his bike to the tree, and would shift the computer away from the customer and hide all books & my kindle so he couldn't just grab and leaf through it. I also would treat any of his excessive ebullience with restraint, rather than encouragement. It seems to have worked, he's much more tenable now, and has learned to keep his distance.

Training customers is mostly quite easy. Though it should only be done with the ones who are repeatedly annoying and interfere with the running of the business on a regular basis.

[Betweenshades]

If there was a customer that was causing us to loose money by driving away the customer base, we would kick them out. It's just not worth it!

[vloglady]

Misty, OP, I know this is OT, but are you safe in Japan? We hear so much terrible news here in the states about what is going on.