Women who only look full-time.

[weeder]

To be getting fed up with my Pilates and yoga teachers who quit class for weeks on end during school holidays? They are not part time the rest of the year, I get in to a pattern of going every week at the same time and then find, usually at about Easter, that they don't cover school holidays and I have to find elsewhere to go. I know it's their choice etc and I don't mean a couple of weeks holiday, I mean up to 7 weeks.

weeder
What does this mean?

"AIBU to buy a weekly service people who appear to be employed..."

OP - I simply cannot fathom why you have such an issue with this. Did you sign some kind of contract with your yoga/Pilates instructor, that they would deliver lessons every week of the year? If not, I simply can't see how you can be bothered to get annoyed.

AIBU to buy a weekly service people who appear to be employed in an on going job where I might reasonably expect them to continue providing this service throughout the year but then turn out to be, in effect, part time because they only work term time

You are not the employer of the instructor.

I don't think I have said no breaks for teachers Betty.
Clearly the general consensus is I AM Being Unreasonable. Not to mention lacking in written English skills! :-0

@ Grunt

Where I said this bit Pumpkin.
"Should I have said 'AIBU to buy a weekly service people who appear to be employed in an on going job where I might reasonably expect them

Que?

Do you really expect the peasants not to take holidays?

If they are providing the service through a third party (ie, a fitness centre), it would be up to the third party to arrange holiday cover where appropriate. Certainly not for the instructor to forego all holidays.

Most people who sign up to classes - of any description - accept there will be times of the year when the course does not run though.

YABU buy a DVD which will look 365 days a year if you wish it to

Any session run by a leisure centre I would expect to run most of the year, with substitute teachers providing cover where necessary, unless explicitly stated. I wouldn't have the same expectation for sessions run in a church hall etc. so how reasonable you were being depends on which category your classes fall into.

What a funny thread!

I think OP is angry?

I used to do Karate, and was eventually forced to give up because the school/univerity clubs I trained at had different terms to me, and only operated term time. Karate isn't just about attending, it's organised progression towards ever-higher targets, and you need a proper professional club that's open all the year round.

I didn't realise how lucky I was when I first started, to have such a professional club. The instructor I had then (before I moved away) had his own purpose-built dojo built onto the front of his suburban house, where he taught four classes a day for six days a week, almost every week of the year. When he went to Japan for a few weeks, he had students to take over his teaching who were more avanced than some of those teaching in the school/university clubs I later moved on to.

Well, I have conducted an experiment and just went to my husband and asked "Do I look full time?" He frowned and looked puzzled and said "Erm.. No?" and then plaintively "I don't know what that means" So I explained that there was a thread title "Women who only look full-time" that was puzzling a lot of people and then he had a lightbulb moment and said: "Does it mean 'women who look 9 mths pregnant but aren't'?"

OP if you want continuity then you need to join a gym. It doesn't guarantee that you will get the same instructor, but the classes will be held year round. It will probably be more expensive than your freelance classes, but that is the price you pay. Or you might find classes through your local council leisure centres.

Or you could just ask at the class if they run during school holidays. Then make your decision from there. Presumably they aren't charging you during the period the classes aren't running so it's not like you are losing money.

Some research suggests that it's a good idea to vary your exercise anyway as your body gets used to what you do. You could use the instructor's holidays to do something different like swimming, walking, attending a council leisure class.

OP - just because the class is run in a health club not in a school hall or an independent hall, doesn't mean the instructor isn't self employed. Often, they do pay rent to the club to rent the space and have their staff take payments for them etc, but the instructor is self employed. In those cases, they often won't work in the school holidays because they won't make enough if enough people don't sign up for it and they have to pay for childcare.

If the instructors were employed directly by the club and there was demand in the club to run the classes all year round, then they would. My local lesiure centre and gym does run some classes all year round, by employees of the centre, but others they don't, even though they are run by employees of the club, not self employed people - because most people available in the day time in the week for these classes are SAHMs, who don't want to do classes in the school holidays.

I know there was complaints when classes were just in weeks of 10 blocks, rather than 'termly', because that meant they often ran over the school holidays, meaning lots of the mums who'd signed up for them had to miss 2-3 classes out of each block. They requested classes to be just term time options to sign up, or pay as you go (so they didn't have to pay for ones they knew they'd miss). The classes that ran all year round and were pay as you go were empty in the school holidays. That stopped being offered very quickly.

If you are free in the daytime during the working week without DCs and have money to spend on fitness classes, then you are in the minority.

It would be hard to be a yoga or Pilates instructor full time. I have a job a bit like this. I am self employed and earn not a great deal and the main attraction is because it fits in with my family. So I don't work during the day in school holidays. If I had to I would be better off getting a full time normal job with benefits like sick pay and holiday.

Thanks for such a helpful post MaryWestmacott. I have resisted joining a private gym because of the expense but I probably aught to think about that again so that I can keep my classes going.

"Does it mean 'women who look 9 mths pregnant but aren't

How lucky for him that he said no when initially asked then!

OP - you don't have to join a private gym, you can join a local authority gym/leisure centre who do have cover for holidays etc --though seeing what you've written so far you STILL wouldn't be happy

Oh and ought is spelt with an O not an A.

Well OP I am not sure whether YABU or YANBU but I would just like to share with the thread that when I moved to the UK, I found this regard for Term Time very strange indeed. Very odd. The entire country seems to revolve around school holidays, parents and schoolchildren, regardless of the rest of the population whether they have kids or not.

For example, church. Vicar and wife, lovely couple with 5 kids. During school hols, there are pared down church services, none of the groups run (prayer groups for older people, etc) there is no Sunday school, etc.

Also for example, yoga and pilates classes - seriously, I have noticed this too.

It is very odd. Maybe it is a European thing. It certainly doesn't happen in North America. Adults' activities would never be dictated by the school calendar. Kids' activities might be different or curtailed but never adults'.

Good job too given the length of the summer holiday in the US :)

Abjectli sorry about the spelling SuperFlyHigh - spellcheck eh?

Am I the only one who thinks the op inbu? Presumably she expects classes to stop at some pojnt, maybe a couple of weeks in summer and a week at christmas but unless it's explicitly stated id expect a weekly class without overt links to the state education system to be just that - weekly.
Do all of you who attend sporting classes or sessions expect them to stop all summer?

Stealth either the OP was specifically told classes would run 52 weeks a year or she wasn't.

If she isn't getting what she was told she was paying for then she INBU and should complain, but if this is all assumption on her part and she didn't check the offer/schedule in the first place she BVU.

Moreover he title implies some bizarre shape-shifting deceit on the part of the instructor and thereby makes her sound distinctly U.

Yes I agree the title is cryptic.
I suspect the op signed uo for (and paid for) something described as "weekly classes". I suspect there was no paperwork. And now the op has discovered that weekly means "weekly unless it's the school holidays" which unless you have young children wouldnt actually occur toyou as a factor in how often a weekly class would run.

I think the OP has a point, but I don't really understand why she is so aggravated about it.

She hasn't signed any contract and doesn't pay for the services when she doesn't receive them. Also being retired, she presumably has more flexibility than most to attend a different class.