Allow me to express my recurring frustrations

If for some unknown reason the desire to become a personal trainer overcomes you---don't! I would advise any job--I repeat ANY job--over personal training. Especially personal training in Utah. There are a great many reasons for my admonition, I'll just list a few. First, while the money is pretty good it is unreliable. To avoid looking like a braggard I will not illucidate the amount of money which I make while training, just trust me on this point. While one is usually entitled to set one's own schedule for taking clients--or at least have excessive flexibility and freedom within certain given parameters--that does not mean that those hours which you make yourself available will always be filled. In fact--at least this is true from my experience in Utah--the vast majority of those time slots will remain unoccupied. One week you could train 10-12 clients and make upwards of $200, but the following week could feasibly consist of training 0-2 people and earning less than $50.

Second, if you have a conscience forget being adequately compensated for time wasted sitting and waiting for people who decide--for whatever reason--not to attend their session on a given day. Let's take my experience from today--although I could realistically select days at random and come up with similar scenarios--as an example. I had a new client (2nd session with me) scheduled for 4 PM and a long-term client (30+ sessions with me) at 5 PM. Now when people do not provide 12 hours notice--excluding dire emergencies--I am entitled to charge them for the session. I sat at my desk, waiting, until 4:15 PM (4:15 is significant because after 15 minutes of tardiness, I am also entitled to charge them for the session), at which point I telephoned said client. I received one of the plethora of excuses which I am always confronted with when telephoning a client in absentia. Not that I am unsympathetic to these--I feel that most of the time, I simply am too sympathetic-- excuses, but they are just getting redundant. Sometimes I feel as if I am telepathic, mouthing the excuses of my client almost word for word as they rattle on. Now like I said, I could have charged this woman for not showing up. What that would equate to is her paying approximately $33 (a price which I feel is absurdly high, but I am the not the owner of my place of employent) for a service which she did not even receive. I simply can't do that. I don't receive even half of that money, but more importantly I feel that it is simply wrong--unforseen things happen which keep people from attending prearrangements. In fact, I do not agree with the system of setting appointments at all (it encourages people to live perpetually in the future, neglecting the present) but I have been unable to devise an alternative system for training my clients. My 5 PM appointment also decided not to show up today. This means that I sat at work for nearly 1.5 hours without receiving a dime. And who knows what the rest of this week will entail.

So there are two reasons while personal training sucks. This list could be excessively longer--including things such as people's inability to accept themselves as they are and trying to live up to some damn "societal norms", destroying their own self esteem in hope that it will provide motivation for them to achieve goals which are not even their own; people's incessant whining about exercises, diet, cardio, etc. (I could have sworn that is what I was hired for--TO PROVIDE ADVICE, not do the exercises for them); and perhaps most disturbing of all, those people who I feel neglect their family obligations for the sake of attaining the aforementioned "physical ideal" which is perpetuated by a select few in society who have few, if any, physical imperfections.