Before I even started this class, I knew I was probably going to be challenged. The girl who made the booking had already proven herself to be aggressive and dictatorial. I had no personal experience with her, but the person who took the booking - a local agency - told me that her usual terms had simply been ignored.
It's her company policy to ask for a deposit in order to secure a booking, then ask for the payment to be settled in advance. I have a slightly different policy for my own private bookings, but I completely get the logic for this one. Well, the girl who booked me simply dictated her own terms and completely refused to compromise on them.
I've encountered people like her before. She has money, and she feels that this gives her license to behave rudely, to overturn anything that doesn't suit her and to make any demands she feels entitled to.
There were two classes being held on this day, so Alison and I agreed that I'd take the smaller one - with the potentially difficult girls - while Alison would take the larger one and run it with Qba. I took the basement room and she took the upper room.
The demands started almost immediately and I didn't personally witness all of them. My class was scheduled to start first, so Alison helped me to prepare and helped welcome the girls, but two of them cornered her and aggressively demanded that she refund them the cost of a drink. They had wandered up to the other room - the one that Qba was using - had bumped into a screen and had, as a result, spilled said drink. Alison managed to get the bar staff to agree to provide a replacement, but that was already a sour note.
When the girls arrived into the basement, one of them took one look at the room and immediately voiced her approval and enthusiasm at the same time in that Neddy kind of "look-at-me" way that only truly obnoxious people can do. She hit this ear-splitting whoop that genuinely had me wincing with pain - and she sustained that note for at least ten seconds. It's not even like I was naked at the time, so she wasn't responding to anything like that. She just wanted to announce her arrival in the room.
Now, normally when the girls first arrive, there's a bit of enthusiasm and they're pretty animated. That's fairly standard and it's all cool. They soon settle down. Not this lot, though. They talked over each other, shouted at each other, had loud conversations with each other - all the time. The hubbub that usually settles down fairly quickly, was continuous and sustained. Repeatedly I found girls looking at me expectantly for direction, but I couldn't talk because someone else was already talking - loudly and animatedly - to someone else. I'd catch that person's attention and let it be known that I had something to say, but as soon as she'd calm down, someone else would immediately fill the silence up with more pointless jabbering. I was genuinely starting to get irritated.
They weren't all rude, though. It's just that the polite ones were also the quiet ones. One of them looked embarrassed at her friends, caught my eye and shrugged. She told me I needed to be more aggressive.
So I agreed. I raised my voice - just louder than the loudest one in the room at that point - and said "Quiet!" And I drew out the last syllable until I had everybody's attention. And then, as if I hadn't had to resort to something so dramatic, I calmly introduced and described the "Make A Giant Man" pose.
When it was all done and I got a chance to talk to Alison, I asked how her class went. She told me that she had a great bunch of girls - quieter, friendly, more polite and really appreciative of what the event. She said they genuinely seemed to enjoy themselves. Which was a huge relief, because her class was twice as big as mine, so if they'd all been as loud as my girls, they'd have been intolerable.
I knew my girls were going to be trouble even before I started. Which is why I chose that group - despite it being the smaller one. I wanted to be able to handle it personally.
But - with the exception of a couple who seemed to wish they were anywhere else - they were genuinely the rudest, most obnoxious and most difficult crowd I've ever had to handle.
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