Schools are something I'd never do.
The numbers are too high, the attitudes and mentality is crazy, the schools are demanding pains in the arse to deal with and it's all just too big a scale for me to want to deal with.
I used to run the lab of a company that did a lot of school photos and it was just stupid. The competition was so high and the only think that justified their meagre profit ratio was the literally millions of kids they shot a year.
The company was still a bunch of penny pinching tightwads just like the clients.
I get a good enough taste of what you are going through right now.
MY phone company stuffed up and was not saving my messages. One company where I had shot their kids was trying to ring me and I never knew. The manager finally caught me in person and was carrying on like I had stolen the crown Jewels. All I heard when I asked her " Why didn't you just email me if you got no response after a week? " was crickets. She knows bloody well when I work and can't take calls because her centre runs the same hours as everyone elses in the industry!
Then I got grief over the 8 complaints out of 1400 kids we shot. When I got her to send me what " We hadn't delivered and the people paid for" I found I had indeed not fulfilled 3 orders. All Disks I somehow marked as done when they weren't. My fault, no question... except how the hell I stuffed them up?
The other 5 " Customers" had never placed an order or paid for anything at all!
I checked and rechecked the orders, checked the order numbers and they were all there so it was impossible we missed them. One client even said I promised her retouching which was ridiculous because when I saw the image and the request, it was not even remotely feasible and I certainly NEVER promise anything like major retouching of a kids Face!
I had one guy order a print and told me if it wasn't ready to pick up next week " he'd track me down to siberia" You'd never be able to find me in siberia, have you ever been there? He said grufly, " NO" I said " Never have I, I hate the cold and wouldn't go near the place".
I later found out he was an ex- politician that resigned in disgrace in 2007 to avoid a corruption investigation. 
One woman recently complained my Photos made her Daughter look fat. Yeah well the kids about 3 times the weight she ought to be but on the bright side, Anexoria is not something you are going to have to worry about her suffering from in the forseeable future. 
I never cease to be amused at how picky some parents can be over nothing and others will buy crap pics where it was impossible to get the kids to look in the general direction of the camera let alone smile or look in any way life like!
I got this kiler shot of a kid last week in the most unreal pose a barely walking kid could be imagined doing. I was itching to show the mother what a legend shooter I was. There were 3 pics of her kid, 2 were nice enough but run of the mill and the killer, put on all my advertising, enter in the awards, make that my signature shot.
She loved the boring shots and was completely unfussed on the best one of all time.
Another parent came over to the sales table and I said to them, tell me which pic do you like best? I flicked through the first 2 then the killer shot. The woman obviously was impressed as hell with the last one but also caught the mothers I'm not sure I like it vibe. In the end there were 3 other mothers oohing and ahhing over the shot and asking "why didn't you get a shot of my kid like that" so the mother took it.
My girl told me when she picked it up, she looked at it and was still very ho hum but was beaming at the other 2.
Amazing.
On the upside, sometimes you get the parents that are just so over the top and thankful you feel a bit " Fake" in that you only took the good looking, co operative kids pic and put no effort into it at all compared to some, but they carry on like you just carried their kid out of a burning building that collapsed 10 sec later.
A little appreciation and thanks goes a long way though and offsets the whining ingrates.
I shoot an amout of 6 month olds up and some of them are just so incredibly cute and sweet, I think " It would be nice to have another kid."
I then think of the 2 teenagers I have at home and all those warm and fuzzy thoughts go right out the window and I wonder What the hell induced that momentary brain malfunction??
From RDKirk: First, let me check the forum heading...yes, it does say "Business of Photography" and not "Hobby of Photography." Okay. So we're talking about making money, not about hobbies. By "business" I am presuming activities that pay expenses and produce a profit over the long term.
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