The other day at my tutoring job I was doing some office work. Despite having databases of all the members of our center, along with data about potential leads, there is quite a lot of paperwork involved. Much of it is rather simple stuff, so it gets relegated to the coaches when they have nothing else to do. Generally I’ll leap at the chance to help out, since I often learn something new about what the Directors do (I hope to be a Director there soon). Also, it lets me work while sitting down in a quiet office instead of dashing around in a busy, noisy center (not that I mind, but, as the Austrailian Mine worker said in Futurama, “This is the closest thing we get to having breaks” 
)
My task in question was to sort through member packets of members who had quit. We always keep these packets on file (but separate from active members) just in case parents decide to change their mind later on and re-join. Since we retained their info, rejoining is a lot easier for everybody involved. However, I had to make sure the packets were people actually quitting, so I had to make sure they had the quit letters attached. Parents who wish to quit must write the center a letter saying they want to quit and give it to the Director a week in advance.
Long story short, I got yelled at for working too slow. 
Why was I going to slow? Because it was so interesting reading the quit letters, and the reasons parents wanted to quit. Some people were so upbeat about it; usually families who didn’t want to quit but had to because of scheduling/financial reasons. Some quit letters were written by the children themselves and I guess dictated by the parents :eek: (I’m guessing because of language issues). And some of these letters were really long. We don’t ask much, if you want to quit, write a brief note about why, and have one last talk with a Director about the matter, to ensure you don’t accidentally get billed for an additional month you didn’t want to be there. Some parents wrote really long, laundry lists of complaints they had about the center. Some of the issues were totally off-base. Our tutoring is not specifically one-on-one, and we carefully explain that to parents. Yet there are quite a few people who wrote “You didn’t give one-on-one attention to my child” Which is kind of baffling to me. Some people didn’t like the tutors, said they were stupid and didn’t pay attention to the kids, which makes me kind of sad, since I try really hard at this job, and try to pass my wisdom on to newer employees. There were also accusations of the center’s methods being too ‘profit driven’ as opposed to ‘service driven’ 
which has me scratching my head, and wishing I had a better understanding of the business model so that I could see how right/wrong the parent was.
Not anything that deserves a pit thread. It is just that sometimes I think by listening really carefully to the most irate, dissatisfied, and possibly irrational people, there might be something useful to be learned form the experience. Then again maybe it just boils down to me filing these packets too damn slow!