Am I being unreasonable?

[mcppalmbeach]

I don’t know how much the emotions of my day are coloring my annoyance about this.

My son is doing driving school through our public school but with a private company. They need 6 hours of driving time over two sessions for their certificate. There are 3 drivers so you get an hour behind the wheel. School gets out at 3:15 and they are supposed to return at 6:15. Monday he had his lesson and my son texted me to pick him up at 6. They technically don’t get started until a little later because the bell rings at 3:15 and the kids have to get there and load up their stuff so I felt like returning at 6 shortchanges everyone, but no big deal.

Monday my son’s school baseball team calls a game today for when his lessons are. I called the driving school to see if I could reschedule (at a cost to me) but there are no dates available for this session and once it’s done it’s done or I can pay privately to finish the session. The woman on the phone said she’d have the owner get back to me to see if there were any other options (ie another location or something like that). He doesn’t get back to me so my son tells the baseball coach he will either be very late to the game or he will miss it. In retrospect I should have called the company, but at no point did I say we were going to cancel. So my son rolls up today at 3:18 and the drivers Ed car is pulling away. I called the company and I’m annoyed but he says there was a miscommunication. At 3:27 he called me back to say they were turning around for him and would be there in 10-20 minutes. And they didn’t pick him up for another 50 minutes. They pulled up as I was back on the phone with the company to see what was going on. The owner was not really apolgetic and said oh they were in blah blah city which is way north of us, but there is no way they had gotten to that city when I first called to say they left my son so they just continued going after they’d gotten the call to turn around. The owner was a jerk about it and said I don’t really know what you want me to do here and I was like how about a sincere apology and an acknowledgment that he’s missing over an hour of on road instruction.

[InBetweenDays]

I don't think you're being unreasonable. Sounds like they have some poor communication and management. But if they marked him as having completed the session and gave him the certificate I'd probably let it go and just do your own road instruction. If they required him to make up the drive in a future session I'd expect them to do that at no extra cost to you.

[livinitup]

I have a 16 yo in Driver’s Ed. It’s just as stupid as it was when I was 16. You are not being unreasonable but nobody cares.

If I was in a better mood I would try harder to not be so cynical. But it’s just a scam class and everybody passes and the instructors phone it in.

[hermione]

My niece hit a road sign, knocking it almost all the way over, in a round about. She don’t know which way to go so she just didn’t choose.

They passed her for the day.

[ellipses84]

Wow, my nephew is in driving school right now and they are so strict! Like they have to log everything down to the minute in a special book and the other day he left it in the wrong car and had to skip the $$$ session and will have to pay for a make up session. I think it’s weird they didn’t turn around and come get him right away because all they are doing is driving around anyway…it’s not like they’d had to drive to a different city. I guess if the guy was busy instructing and didn’t get the message right away that would be an ok reason. If they aren’t concerned and will sign off, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just take him out for some extra driving time.

My driving school class was in a scuba school and for our actual driving lessons the instructor, who was quite a character, would have us do things like pick his kid up from school and drop him off at soccer. Years later, he was in the news because he was arrested for fraud.

[donutsmakemegonuts]

Nov 8, 2024 4:06:39 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

Wow, my nephew is in driving school right now and they are so strict! Like they have to log everything down to the minute in a special book and the other day he left it in the wrong car and had to skip the $$$ session and will have to pay for a make up session. I think it’s weird they didn’t turn around and come get him right away because all they are doing is driving around anyway…it’s not like they’d had to drive to a different city. I guess if the guy was busy instructing and didn’t get the message right away that would be an ok reason. If they aren’t concerned and will sign off, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just take him out for some extra driving time.

My driving school class was in a scuba school and for our actual driving lessons the instructor, who was quite a character, would have us do things like pick his kid up from school and drop him off at soccer. Years later, he was in the news because he was arrested for fraud.

My driving instructor made me drive to her son's condo in the next town over so she could check on it while he was out of town lol.  She was a really nice lady, just a little kooky.  My best friend also had her as a driving instructor and when she got into a pretty serious car accident (my friend), my instructor called me to see how I was doing because she knew we were best friends.

[kadams767]

I understand being annoyed, but honestly, am a little relieved to see others saying about the same thing I was going to say. Drivers Ed, while necessary, has always been like this and a bit off the wall, IME. We used to drive to the waterfront, park and go for walks for at least half the time while our instructor smoked cigarettes and we ate McDonalds breakfast. Everyone passed.

[tiki]

I thought I had an unusual driver's ed experience (instructor turned out to be a palm reader. Had me drive to a head shop, she bought me a necklace, then had me drive to a restaurant and she told my fortune over a slice of pie). Clearly it's just a very whatever-goes industry.

[wildrice]

This thread explains so much of why there are so many bad drivers, lol.

I'm sorry OP, I would just work with him more on your own too.