Grumpy Pilot Problem

Spawned from a drifting thread on the death of a gliderport:

On Friday, January 24, 2014 9:57:39 PM UTC-5, wrote:

When pilots drive 125 miles to a hot desert "middle of nowhere" location to fly gliders, they don't expect to receive lectures and condescending attitudes from the FBO and staff.

This rings very true. A few years back, the place that I learned to soar realized that it had GPP (Grumpy Pilot Problem) and that Grumpy Pilots were killing the operation. When I got there, a deliberately friendly and encouraging new deal had come to fore, but every so often a GRUMP would make an ASS of himself. The experienced people, who had seen it so many times before, would shake their heads and laugh. But some of the younger and newer people took that bad behavior to heart. Score...minus one for gliderport.

The problem is two-fold:

1)TRUE GRUMPS - pilots who are in the habit of boosting their fragile egos by treating student pilots and "ride people" poorly. There are so many ways to do this and we have all seen it.

2)FALSE GRUMPS - pilots that (rightly so) adopt a pre-flight focused-on-the- mission steely gaze. They either say nothing to a newbie or respond in grunts. Their vacant gaze looks to be a scowl to the bubbling beginners in their post-flight euphoria. Experienced people know that the steely gaze is purposeful.

Newbies have a very hard time sorting Grumps from False Grumps. Both kinds of grumps do great harm to the sport.

The real Grumps should be more self-aware and behave better, or just stay away from the newbies. The False Grumps should excuse themselves from the group and stand off 50 feet or so when they are ready to enter their pre-flight meditation phase.

And then there is that rare and priceless creature, the Anti-Grump. That congenial pilot who sits and waits for the lift to improve. With practiced skill, he graciously extends himself to guests and students, without overbearing. He does the sport a world of good.