Cards and Lessons

This morning, my students, 2 sisters, forgot to bring their lesson card.

Ok, some background first:
The rink here sells lessons in sets of 5. For each set, the skater will get a lesson card that lists the dates for the 5 lessons. This card will be signed against the relevant date as they come in for lesson. Coaches will then be paid a commission for lessons that are conducted. Yes, this is a wonderful way of keeping track of it all!

It is inevitable that cards sometimes get left behind, lost, etc. The rink has a policy of "no card, no lesson". They do also charge a fee to replace cards.

Previously, I had students forget cards. What do they do?
1. Go home to get it. (only for those staying really close by!)
2. Call someone at home to bring it. (for those staying not-too-far-away)
3. Pay for a replacement card. (if skater is willing to do that!)
4. Pay for following set of lessons and use that instead.
5. Cancel this week's lesson and postpone to next week.

Would anyone disagree that #5 is horribly unfair to the coach? We are there, the skater is there, and yet we have to sit around doing nothing while missing out on the commission for the lesson. So, I would usually try to use solutions #1, 2, 3 or 4.

So, back to the story...
This morning, the sisters were willing to pay for their next set of lessons, but... get this: they cannot do that because they had not yet put in a request for the next set of lessons, and they cannot put in a request for today's lesson because all requests have to be approved by the office before they can pay for & start lessons!!

Every rink works differently and I respect that. The skating school at the rink here takes care of lessons, fees, and scheduling. Policies are set to protect the business. While I do appreciate that this removes the burden of coaches having to deal with money issues, I find it hard to accept the inefficiency the rigidness of the system leads to.

There's got to be a better way to deal with such things...