gut;1423083 wrote:I think you need to distinguish for the first day or two of class and allow some leeway. There are many reasons why a student could have a scheduling conflict, and in my experience most professors would just prefer you do what you need to do rather than bother them with an email.
If we turn it around, the student is really the buyer here. And so if a buyer turns up an hour late, they probably don't expect to be lectured or turned away by a seller.
Oh, I agree that some leeway should be granted. However, the leeway should be for things like being unfamiliar with campus and not knowing where to go. At an hour late, you're not accidentally late. You're intentionally late. Being intentionally late is indeed a rude thing.
As for whether contacting the professor is necessary, it would have been WISER for him to do so. If the professor would have preferred he just do what he had to do (as the other two professors probably did, given that there is no mention of their reaction to the student's leaving the class early and/or joining it late), he probably would have told him so in the email. But it is the student's responsibility to cover his bases if he wishes to do something out of the ordinary. Provided he expressed that in the email, I sincerely doubt any professor would be annoyed that his student was being thorough.
As for being a customer, it's not a complete apples-to-apples comparison. I'd suggest that it's more like a Country Club. The patrons are indeed the customers, but they are required to be accepted, and they can be kicked out at the Club's discretion. The student jumped through the hoops to be in that school (a prestigious business school) where the supply is low and the demand is high. If he leaves, there are plenty of students happy to take his place. As such, the school doesn't need to cater to the student, since there are plenty of students willing to cater to the school in order to reap the benefits of the actual education and degree.
