Almighty Coach

Thor was more than 50 years old, and he had been a fitness coach when he was young. Later, he ran a small community gym, and after several years of operation, the small gym became a medium-sized gym and then a large-scale fitness club. At present, it had become a more advanced “Thor Fitness Training Center.”

More than three years ago, Thor had recruited a coach from Dai Li, and it was a quite successful deal for him. Because Dai Li didn’t pay that coach much, Thor promised to pay the coach an extra 30% of his original salary.

Thor was very content with his decision, because the new coach he got from Dai Li had good performance, even though he had to pay an extra 30% of the man’s salary, he still had an advantage, because it was difficult to train a qualified coach in a short time. No fitness training center would reject such a professional and experienced coach, who could concentrate on work immediately.

At that time, Thor heard that the Ironman Training Center recruited more coaches from Dai Li, and he even regretted not taking measures earlier, or he could have recruited more talented coaches from Dai Li.

Three months later, however, Thor suddenly changed his mind, and found himself regretting his decision to recruit a coach from Dai Li.

Coaches are not scientists. If a scientist could get results from his scientific research in several years, it would be quite fast for him. But many scientists have to spend their entire lives to research a project, and the result wouldn’t come out until the end of their lives. Some scientific results wouldn’t be confirmed until decades after the scientist’s death.

For coaches, three months is enough to prove their training level and coaching ability. For example, if an NBA basketball team changed coaches before the new season, then about one month’s pre-season training camp, 20 days of pre-season games, and one month of regular games are enough to estimate the coaching ability of the new coach. The same is true of football, in that about three months would be enough to estimate the ability of the football coach.

But it would be much quicker to the evaluate the ability of fitness coach. Ten or fifteen days would check the effect of short-term fitness training. Generally speaking, if there wasn’t any effect after a month of fitness training, then the training would have failed.

Now three months had passed, and the new coach should have showed his training results. However, several of his customers retrogressed to varying degrees. Instead of making progress, they stagnated.

Thor realized that he had made a bad decision. What he recruited from Dai Li was not a perfect coach, but a “fake” coach, and he was not worth of the salary Thor paid him.

At the same time, Robin, the boss of another fitness training center in Los Angeles, was also glum.

The man sitting opposite Robin was his partner Johnson. He kept on complaining, “There is no wonder why Walker could only get a small salary; it turns out that he has poor ability.”

“I’m sorry, Johnson, it’s my fault. Walker is not a qualified fitness coach. He would be an entry-level coach in our training center,” Robin added. “But he had great performance when he worked in Dai Li’s training center, and the reason why I decided to recruit him was that I saw the successful cases he had executed. But when he came to our training center, his performance was totally different.”

“Yeah, you made a bad decision. So, I have a suggestion; why not correct the mistake in time? We don’t need such a useless coach!” Johnson said in a low voice.

Robin was silent for a few seconds, then he nodded approvingly and said happily, “Have you heard that other training centers also recruited coaches from Dai Li’s training center, and all of those coaches have had bad performance? Fortunately, we only got one coach from Dai Li’s training center, and we might have lost a whole year’s profit if we had several coaches from Dai Li’s training center.”

“Yes, I heard about that. All the coaches recruited from Dai Li’s training center have had bad performance. If I hadn’t recruited coaches from Dai Li’s training center voluntarily, I would have even suspected that Dai Li was trying to trick us by giving useless people to us,” Johnson said and shook his head. “Now I really admire Dai Li. He knew that those coaches didn’t deserve such a high salary, so when we went there and recruited them, Dai Li didn’t object, and we even regarded them as treasure.”

“What I’m wondering now is why these coaches had good performance when they worked for Dai Li, but when they worked for other training centers, all of them had bad performance,” said Robin.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s magic from the east! Think about ‘Blade Runner’ Philip; he has no legs, but he can beat the top able-bodied runners. In addition, Kevin Taylor is stronger now at 32 years old than he was at 22 years old. In my view, it’s impossible, but Dai Li did it,” Johnson said with a helpless expression.

“Maybe he is a wizard. His training center should be renamed; it should be called Wizard Training Center instead of Dai Li’s Training Center,” Robin remarked jokingly. “By the way, have you thought about Max, from the Ironman Training Center? He spent so much money to recruit the most coaches from Dai Li, I think he must have suffered great losses by now.

The Ironman Training Center

Jones looked decadent.

Jones felt that he was hard-working. He arrived at the Ironman Training Center early every day, and he came home late after work. He put almost all his energy into his work, and he even considered how to make training plans for clients in his days off. Over the past several months, he hadn’t gone to the movies, he hadn’t watched ball games, he hadn’t gone to his favorite bar, he hadn’t even saved the time that he usually allocated for computer games.

But his efforts didn’t pay off. Shortly before, all the students in Jones’s 24-hour Frogman Challenge training class had failed the challenge. After that, someone even complained about his training to his boss Max.

It made Jones confused. He had made such efforts, but the results were terrible.

“When I worked in Dai Li’s training center, my training was very effective. Even the professional athletes were able to make remarkable progress under my training. But when I came here, I made more effort than before, but the results were several levels lower than before. Why?”

Jones looked not far away. There was a coach named Claude, who was a colleague of Jones, now and before.

Claude was once a coach in Dai Li’s training center as well, he had come here with Jones at the same time. And he had the same trouble as Jones; namely, when he worked for Dai Li, he had a good performance and he was praised by many people. But when he came to the Ironman Training Center, he was totally different from before.

It was said that his clients complained about him yesterday. He has the same terrible situation as me, thought Jones.

Just then, a man in the distance shouted to Jones, “Coach Jones, the boss asked you to go to his office!”

Jones was a little confused.

Max sat in his office and he looked very serious. In front of him were several dismissal letters, and Jones’s name was on the first letter.

“It’s time to put an end to it,” Max murmured.

“You need to do this.” The bearded coach was sitting opposite to Max. “If we keep such an unskilled guy here, we will lose more and more clients. In fact, you should’ve fired them just after the end of the fitness training course.”

“You are right. They cost me an extra month’s salary and many clients, which were also a big loss. It’s good that we won’t lose next month’s salary,” Max nodded.

“But according to the rules, you should still pay him another month’s salary,” said the bearded man.

An employer could fire an employee at any time in the United States, since the nation could basically be viewed as employer-dominated. In many states, a reasonable excuse was needed to fire an employee; for example, late arrival to work, low work efficiency, lack of professional ethics, negative impact on the company, and so on. However, in California, the law allowed the employer to fire any employee without any reason at all.

As for labor law, the United States didn’t mandate open-ended contracts. The labor law in the United States mainly protected the employment of certain disadvantaged groups, such as avoiding racial and gender discrimination in employment, and preventing employment discrimination of disabled people.

Also because of this, the United States had many powerful labor unions. Workers who joined a union would have more speaking rights when facing their employers. If their employer fired them without any excuses, they could strike back.

Surely, the compensation for layoff was needed. In general, the compensation contained salary of 1+N months, in which the N stood for the employee’s service years in the company. Taking Jones as example, who hadn’t worked over one year, he only could get one month’s worth of salary as his compensation.

Walking out of the Ironman Training Center, Jones still held the dismissal letter and compensation check.

I’m out of work! Jones still didn’t believe what had happened.

Three months ago, the Ironman Training Center had poached him with the offer of a fat salary. He came here with great ambition and prepared to achieve his big plans.

But three months later, he was like a poor dog, kicked out of the Ironman Training Center with disgrace.

A real master like me can go any place I want! There are so many fitness training centers in Los Angeles. With my work experience, will I even need to worry about my job? Jones started to encourage himself. He took out his phone and checked the latest recruitment information on a recruiting website.

He heard some footsteps behind him, which were from Jones’s previous colleague. Claude came out of the room, also with a dismissal letter in his hand.

Thor Fitness Training Center

Thor, the boss of the training center, looked at the young interviewee and opened his resume. One of the lines of the resume caught his eyes immediately.

“Mr. Jones, I notice that you have worked in Dai Li’s training center in your resume, so can you tell me why you left there to go to the Ironman Training Center?” Thor already had some doubt, but he asked calmly.

“Because Mr. Max offered me a higher salary,” Jones said proudly. In his view, a raise in salary was something to show off, or at least something to prove his value.

But Thor, with a wry smile on his face, soliloquized in a very low voice, “I see, he must have made Max suffer a great loss…”

“Mr. Thor, what did you say? I didn’t hear you clearly,” asked Jones.

Thor narrowed his eyes and looked at Jones with a forced smile. “Mr. Jones, the job in my training center is not suitable for you.”

“Mr. Thor, we can talk more about the salary…” Jones thought Thor was trying to reduce the salary.

“No, no, no, Mr. Jones, it has nothing to do with salary.” Thor leaned back and said, “We don’t need a staff member who worked for Dai Li.”

“Why?” asked Jones instinctively.

“Because I just fired a staffer. He was the same as you; he used to be a coach in Dai Li’s training center.” Thor stretched out his two fingers and said, “There is a big pit in the ground. If you fall into it the first time, you can say you are careless, but if you fall into it twice, that’s stupid.”