Withdrawals For Reasons Of Work Or Health

As FIOFAFI is aimed at working adults and promoting health and fitness, I’m very accommodating of irregular participation or withdrawals due to work and social commitments, illness and injuries.

On the other hand, we’ve had several late withdrawals over the past couple of weeks, which results in more work for me, in having to find replacements within a short time. To this end, I make more use of SMSes and e-mails, which runs counter to the aim of using the blog as the primary vehicle for arranging our regular sessions.

We all know that working life is such that there will be days where we only realize we have to work late on the day itself. At times when work is heavy, you may have no choice but to cut down on the number of sessions you play, or even give FIOFAFI sessions a miss for a week or two.

However, if you find that you are having to miss FIOFAFI sessions weeks on end, you have to ask yourself whether you’ve got your work-life balance right.

On the other hand, if you have been ill or injured, it is better that you recover fully before you return. Confirming for a session before you are fully recovered risks aggravating the illness or injury, or a late withdrawal from the session.

If you have to withdraw due to illness or an injury on the day of the session itself, I trust you will know by lunchtime at the latest whether you can play that night, and both post your withdrawal on the blog and SMS me by then. For Monday night sessions, SMS Tom as well as me.

As the levels of performance at FIOFAFI sessions continues to improve, coming back after laying off for a few weeks gets harder. Accordingly, I have introduced an adjustment to the ranking system by deducting 0.25 for each week that a participant has not played (up to a maximum of 1.0).

FIOFAFI sessions remain available to everyone to play as often as they want to play. However, to keep the organization of the sessions simple, at the time you confirm for a session, please be reasonably sure that you can make that session, and if you subsequently realize that you can’t make that session, withdraw promptly.

I’m not saying don’t confirm early, or don’t subsequently withdraw if you have to – just do try to keep late withdrawals to a minimum.

And if you do end up missing FIOFAFI sessions for a whole week, don’t forget, there’s always the following week!