Courtesy isn't a business decision; it’s the mark of a civilised society.
I agree and I think if you read through the thread carefully you will find that no-one has been defending discourtesy on any grounds at all - I certainly haven't. There is no excuse for rudeness.
What I am saying is that it is unrealistic for an unknown person to turn up unannounced at a busy flying school and to expect employees who are busy looking after their customers (ie they are teaching people to fly or handling all the admin that goes with that) to drop everything for a lengthy conversation and a look round.
If you'd taken your car to the garage to be serviced and agreed to pick it up at 4pm, you'd be pretty upset if it wasnt ready when you got there and the excuse was "Sorry we didn't do the work on your car because we were busy talking to someone who dropped in to ask about how we do things."
You'd expect the garage to have prioritised your work (as a paying customer) over chatting to prospects. You'd quite rightly go somewhere else next time and you'd tell everyone you know about the bad experience you'd had.
Back to flying schools - if you want to find out whether you like them, please give them a call beforehand and make an appointment - then the right person will be able to answer all your questions and everybody will be happy.
Oh and if a school has got paid employees sitting around doing nothing (not on a break I mean) then its got bigger problems and I'd be inclined to go elsewhere simply because of that. A good school should be a busy school. (I'm not working today btw, so I'm not wasting my customers' time by replying to this thread)