Riverside is a solid hour from me so I know that drive alone eats a whole day. But see, I came out of my cert actually doing smoother work than before, and a big part of that was the hands on time even if it was short. The girl two chairs over might be fast but she learned her stuff somewhere too, and some of us need the rep work and the paper at the end. A 20 minute walkthrough from a coworker is great until she quits or you move shops and then you are stuck with nothing to show a new owner. Plenty of those cheap learn it from a friend setups leave you with bad habits you do not find out about until a client's hair fries off. I get that yours was a waste, the marketing pitch part would have burned me up too. But writing off all smoothing certs because one instructor in Riverside sucked feels like throwing out the whole box for one bad egg.