Some people know the policies perfectly well. That is, until those policies apply to them.

This music teacher worked with the same client every week for more than two years. The client regularly showed up late and overslept often enough that the teacher moved the lesson time later in the day to help avoid missed sessions.

Then the client’s manager stepped in and took over scheduling and payments. Things became an issue after the client overslept again and completely missed a lesson.

Suddenly, the manager wanted to argue about the cancellation policy and acted surprised that the missed session still needed payment.

Keep reading to see how it all played out.

AITA for making my client’s manager pay for his upcoming session because he missed his last one due to him oversleeping?

My client, let’s call him V, has been working with me for over 2 years. He has a manager that we’ll call SAS.

V is a grown adult in his early 30’s and more of a professional in the industry of the field of music. His manager and I have butted heads in the past.

V and I have had weekly sessions every Sunday at 1 pm for 45 minutes since early 2024. Originally, our lessons were at 10am, but I moved them later because he would oversleep and miss up to 20 minutes of his session and I wanted to make sure he got his full time.

Suddenly, SAS wanted all communication going through him.

I have cancellation policies I shared with V at the start of working together, and have sent out many, many update emails if there have ever been any tweaks. V has never complained or shown any concern for the changes, and other than the fact that he’s almost always 5-7 minutes late to his sessions, has been a kind, and fun client to work with.

A few months ago, SAS said that we needed to communicate more directly with him and not V for scheduling and payment. He was very particular about reminding him really early in the week prior to V’s session.

The session times haven’t changed in nearly 2 years, and I have V’s email linked to be reminded 24 hours in advance to his sessions. Despite this, I agreed to remind SAS on Wednesdays.

SAS was very reluctant to sent payment.

Recently, last week, V overslept again and missed the 15 minute grace period of notice for his lesson. I told him per the cancellation policies, we’d have to just pick things back up the following week (this Sunday). I coordinated with SAS to set for Saturday instead because of Easter. He was fine with that.

Tonight, I messaged SAS to remind him to send over payment for the session in accordance to an 8 hour in advance payment policy and SAS became upset, claiming he thought it was covered last week even though V forfeited the session due to missing it from oversleeping.

SAS was very reluctant to pay for V’s session and said that the policies never reached SAS or the management team.

He finally paid the fee.

I explained to him about my sending out the policies to V repeatedly over the course of the year, and also having them accessible to my website.

I want to clarify that, no, I never had V or SAS sign a contract of any sort, but have directly sent V the cancellation policies many, many times and have never had any concerns or problems with them in the past.

Finally, SAS agreed to pay the fee for the session for this week after much debate.

AITA?

Yikes! It sounds like they need to clarify who’s in charge on V’s side.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a restaurant manager who confronts a family who left a very small tip.

Let’s check out how the readers over at Reddit feel about this.

This person would change the policy.

The guy does seem hard to manage.

Here’s someone who wouldn’t have let it get so far.

For this reader, the teacher did everything right.

It’s funny how the manager suddenly cared a whole lot about the policies once money got involved.

The teacher already showed a ton of flexibility over the years by moving lesson times around and working with somebody who regularly showed up late or overslept.

At some point, though, people still need to take responsibility for missing appointments they booked.

Oversleeping doesn’t magically make the time free.