Hi Avery, You wrote: The 'requiring' thing has never come up since most of my performance tunings start at 5 PM. I can basically set my own hours so if I want, I can always come in late to offset the late tunings. When I was at UGA, I was pretty much able set my own hours. Not an early bird, I liked that at the time. I could come in around lunch and work into the night if I wanted to, and be able to get more done that way. I was working graveyard shift and weekends to be able to get to whatever needed doing, including tuning faculty studio pianos, concert pianos, busy practice rooms, etc., because I wanted to impress them without inconveniencing them. But since I've moved over here, I was fortunate enough to follow someone who took no crap off of anybody, and they liked him. I can't decide if it's frustrating, or a blessing, or what, but our performance hall here is also used as a classroom, seminar room, rehearsal room, faculty meeting room, etc., and the schedule is booked. I have to reserve tuning times prior to the start of the semester, or I may not be able to get in (in October I reserved times for next semester). There are 2 D's (ca. 1994) in there. The only time available for me to tune for concerts is prior to 9 or 10 am. (Then on Thursday, there may be a faculty meeting at 8:30, regardless of that you've reserved the room, which you weren't told about until they come in and you're just moving into the treble section.) The prepared piano just has to sit there all day and go through rehearsals, classes, etc., but that has always been the case here and the faculty is very understanding. So far, and I've only been here since August, I've gotten only raving compliments on my tunings and technical work on those pianos despite the length of time they are tuned before the performance. My weekend performances are tuned on Friday (morning even), unless there is something extremely special going on. But the scary thing is that the schedule is so booked, that in the event of a broken string, or something in the action going haywire (we sometimes have to live with damper problems--another great subject for discussion), there quite possibly may not be enough time to repair it prior to performance. But because of that schedule, I'm able leave by no later than 4:30, and either go make extra money or spend the afternoon with my family (the norm). I still can pretty much set my own hours, but I've come to prefer the standard ones. I've gotten used to getting up early. I'm happy, the faculty seems very happy...life is good..... ......finally. Jeff Jeff Tanner, Piano Technician School of Music University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 (803)-777-4392 (phone) (803)-777-6508 (fax)
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