Hawkeye Harriet

[Jim]

Hi James:

I always take it as a compliment when someone is so interested in what I
am doing that they will sit there during the entire tuning procedure.
Sometimes I will engage in conversation in a limited way. I usually do
not initiate any however, because I believe they hired me primarily to
tune their piano and do whatever service is needed.  For the occasional
observer who has "perfect pitch" and who insists that s/he can hear better
than I can, I do not get defensive about that. I simply explain quite
briefly that tuning is a compromise and if they have a different 
preference than I for a note or two, I can afford to accommodate them,
especially since they are paying the bill.  Now, if they were to want to
dictate each note location for me, I might legitimately wonder why in the
world they called me in the first place. I have never had such a 
situation. If at the conclusion of my tuning, a customer should question
my choice of location for a particular note, I usually respond that I
can tune it anywhere they would like it, but that is only my personal
preference and I would be happy to acquiesce to their preference. I 
suppose that if a customer persisted in second guessing my complete tuning,
I might go on the hourly rate at that point since they had not expressed
their personal preferences before I started. Frankly, these scenarios are
not likely to develop if one can do a reasonably good job in the first 
place.

It's perfectly OK for a customer to have an interest in what we do. They
only get to see us once or twice a year. I also never worry about small
children hanging around while I tune. Their attention span is usually so
short that they will get bored and run along elsewhere soon. On the rare
occasions where there are 3 or 4 children hanging around and being noisy,
I may engage their assistance in helping me by keeping the room quiet
while I am working. I offer to show them a magic trick when I'm done IF
they do a good job keeping the room quiet.

Jim Coleman, Sr.

On Tue, 8 Jul 1997, james allen bickerton wrote:

> james allen bickerton wrote:
> > 
> > Performed a tuning for a first-time customer the other day.  Commenced
> > the pre-tuning inspection with the usual chit chat, and once she and I
> > agreed on the service to be performed, I sat down and began tuning the
> > piano.  It was an upright Samick, 2 years old that had been tuned 6
> > months prior.
> >   At this point, most of my customers say something to the effect, "I'll
> > be in the other room, if you need anything, just shout."  But not this
> > one.  She sat down on a couch 10 feet directly behind me and watched me
> > tune the piano pin by pin directly over my shoulder.
> >   Feeling a little uneasy, I again engaged her in conversation, hoping
> > that she would tire of the idle chit chat, but no such luck.  After 20
> > minutes, I found myself losing concentration as I attempted to both tune
> > the piano and verbally engage my customer.  I couldn't decide whether
> > she was just lonely, since she was a single parent in her early 40's, or
> > whether she didn't totally trust me with her piano.  To make matters
> > worse, I learned through our chat that I was her third tuner in 2 years
> > (was she too demanding?), and because I have pet allergies, I had taken
> > an allergy tablet prior to entering her house, so I was feeling a bit
> > edgy to begin with.
> >   She must have been satisfied because she agreed to have me tune her
> > piano again in 6 months.
> >   My question is, how do you TACTFULLY handle a situation like this?  My
> > business is young, and I am eager to please.  But in this case, my
> > eagerness slowed my progress, and I was an hour late for my next
> > appointment.
> >                                    Flailing in Fayetteville
>