I've enjoyed reading this post - and possibly the accusation of bitterness could be leveled at me because for sure I've made some (relatively) angry posts on SB, but these are borne out frustration, rather than anything else. I neither hold the majority of my divers or students in contempt or feel any kind of bitterness towards them, but if I make one comment about one particular person then the perception might be skewed towards believing that I feel the same way about *all* of the divers I encounter, which could not be further from the truth, given that several thousand pass through my current centre every year, and I directly work with many hundreds. It also has to be said that my rather dry sense of humour does not always come across well in type! 
As an example - I made a couple of blog posts last year about a couple of divers - one who complained we were ripping him off because we charged him for three extra dives because he insisted he had done only ten, despite logging 13 in his log book, and another diver who, after passing through 3 very experienced instructors over two days, checked out angrily because we would not allow him to participate with the group diving on the boat, and confined him to the house reef. He gave every excuse possible, the BCD wasn't working properly, the fins were no good, the tank must have been half empty, blahblah, but would not or could not own up to the fact that he was a really terrible diver, in serious need of further training. This might give the impression that I think all divers are dishonest or no good, but rather like the editor of a newspaper, publishing an article that says "Everything was great today, there was no fighting in Iraq, and Mitt Romney went to the lavatory, ate breakfast and went jogging in the park" does not sell newspapers, I think you will find that instructors post on here about problem students, bad days, and frustrations, because actually a post that reads "so I had six open water students, they were all great, had fun and saw some fish" is pretty much what happens every day, quite normal, and not especially interesting to read about.
I think it's also true to say that there are a lot of non-instructor divers on SB who feel anger, bitterness, frustration, whatever, towards their instructors, LDS, agencies, dive guides or whatever, because they feel they were being ripped off, the instructor did something dangerous, the guide fell asleep on the sun deck, whatever, and that is flak that we take on a regular basis. Another blog of mine (I'm not *reeeallly advertising, just pointing stuff out! ) about people who walk into a dive centre asking for a discount because they automatically expect that we are cheating them out of money received both positive and negative feedback - positive from dive professionals, negative from potential customers. Am I bitter about people asking for discounts? Not really, because we do give them, but the automatic assumption that we, as dive instructors or dive centres are seeking only to leech money out of people is another seriously frustrating aspect of working in the industry, given that we don't earn a lot of money in the first place. On the other hand, yeah, some dive centres are only out for the cash money, but it's not representative of *all* of them, but I think it's almost basic human nature to complain rather than praise, to read about the gory side of life, rather than the nice pretty flowers that grow in your war-torn country of choice, metaphorically speaking. There's more complaints on SB than praise in the Kudos forum, after all...!
There is a lot of inter-agency bitterness between instructors: This or that agency is better than the other, if you want to be a real diver you have to buy a BP/W before we even teach you, the only way to dive is with XYZ agency and only instructors with 30 years of experience who can calculate deep gas decompression profiles without a calculator are worthy of teaching basic scuba classes - and that I think is borne of the simple fact that scuba diving is quite easy, actually, very safe, and most divers - even those trained by 18 year old, freshly certified instructors, have a tendency not to die at all, but "it ain't like it used to be in the old days"...!
If we were all bitter instructors, we would not keep doing this - 7 years in my case - and if we were all bitter about our customers then we would have been fired a long time ago. If divers were bitter about the service that we give them, they would never come back to dive with us, which rather a lot of them do, actually, and often request us personally, and if there's one or two that I never want to see again, or never want to see me again, out of the thousands I have worked with over the years, then so be it, because probably the other customers don't want to share a boat with them again, either.
Safe diving, have fun, don't be bitter - but if you do have a serious problem - speak up and discuss, the world is a better place that way.
Cheers
C.
As an example - I made a couple of blog posts last year about a couple of divers - one who complained we were ripping him off because we charged him for three extra dives because he insisted he had done only ten, despite logging 13 in his log book, and another diver who, after passing through 3 very experienced instructors over two days, checked out angrily because we would not allow him to participate with the group diving on the boat, and confined him to the house reef. He gave every excuse possible, the BCD wasn't working properly, the fins were no good, the tank must have been half empty, blahblah, but would not or could not own up to the fact that he was a really terrible diver, in serious need of further training. This might give the impression that I think all divers are dishonest or no good, but rather like the editor of a newspaper, publishing an article that says "Everything was great today, there was no fighting in Iraq, and Mitt Romney went to the lavatory, ate breakfast and went jogging in the park" does not sell newspapers, I think you will find that instructors post on here about problem students, bad days, and frustrations, because actually a post that reads "so I had six open water students, they were all great, had fun and saw some fish" is pretty much what happens every day, quite normal, and not especially interesting to read about.
I think it's also true to say that there are a lot of non-instructor divers on SB who feel anger, bitterness, frustration, whatever, towards their instructors, LDS, agencies, dive guides or whatever, because they feel they were being ripped off, the instructor did something dangerous, the guide fell asleep on the sun deck, whatever, and that is flak that we take on a regular basis. Another blog of mine (I'm not *reeeallly advertising, just pointing stuff out!
) about people who walk into a dive centre asking for a discount because they automatically expect that we are cheating them out of money received both positive and negative feedback - positive from dive professionals, negative from potential customers. Am I bitter about people asking for discounts? Not really, because we do give them, but the automatic assumption that we, as dive instructors or dive centres are seeking only to leech money out of people is another seriously frustrating aspect of working in the industry, given that we don't earn a lot of money in the first place. On the other hand, yeah, some dive centres are only out for the cash money, but it's not representative of *all* of them, but I think it's almost basic human nature to complain rather than praise, to read about the gory side of life, rather than the nice pretty flowers that grow in your war-torn country of choice, metaphorically speaking. There's more complaints on SB than praise in the Kudos forum, after all...! There is a lot of inter-agency bitterness between instructors: This or that agency is better than the other, if you want to be a real diver you have to buy a BP/W before we even teach you, the only way to dive is with XYZ agency and only instructors with 30 years of experience who can calculate deep gas decompression profiles without a calculator are worthy of teaching basic scuba classes - and that I think is borne of the simple fact that scuba diving is quite easy, actually, very safe, and most divers - even those trained by 18 year old, freshly certified instructors, have a tendency not to die at all, but "it ain't like it used to be in the old days"...!
If we were all bitter instructors, we would not keep doing this - 7 years in my case - and if we were all bitter about our customers then we would have been fired a long time ago. If divers were bitter about the service that we give them, they would never come back to dive with us, which rather a lot of them do, actually, and often request us personally, and if there's one or two that I never want to see again, or never want to see me again, out of the thousands I have worked with over the years, then so be it, because probably the other customers don't want to share a boat with them again, either.
Safe diving, have fun, don't be bitter - but if you do have a serious problem - speak up and discuss, the world is a better place that way.
Cheers
C.
