Fired from the Ski School!

The concise letter illustrating this blog was written just 50 years ago and mailed to me the following day. Bad luck, though, I didn’t get a chance to open it up as I had already left for Tübingen, Germany, south of Stuttgart, where I had traveled to take an intensive German course from November 5 to December 14, 1973. 

It was an official announcement that I was fired from the Avoriaz Ski School, along with two friends and colleagues, Henri Marullaz and Xavier Guiot. I don’t recall who reach me in Germany to gave me the bad news as phone contact wasn't easy at the school where I was studying. I don’t remember either how I took this rather bad piece of news. 

To this day, I don’t know what went into Pernet’s head to make that dumb decision. Perhaps his machismo got the best of him; his off-season job was to drive a huge bulldozer to cut the ski runs, so he must have preferred forceful action to negotiation. His tastes were a bit Teutonic too, as his favorite cars were BMW's, his skis Fischer and his boots Humanic. 

Was I angry at Claude Pernet for firing us without due process? I can’t seem to remember. What is sure is that, for a few years, I remained pretty pissed off at the man, but since then, I have forgiven, but not forgotten his brutal behavior. This said, Pernet’s decision was reversed by a vote of the ski school’s general assembly shortly before I returned from Germany. That episode was the first blow in my ski instructing career. 

My activism wasn’t worth the discomfort it brought me, and I began to consider an alternative to my “selling turns”. In retrospect, this firing might have been for the very best!