On Wed, 11 Feb 1998 Wimblees@aol.com wrote: > A similar incedent happened to me about a year ago. When I told him I > was done, he still was refusing to pay me. I was so furiuous with him by > that time I was ready to punch his lights out... Sometimes ya just gotta vent those pent-up hostilities. Although "punching out a client's lights" might not always be a good idea, there are alterna- tives. Although he's been gone for some time now, I used to know a tuner named "Bob". Bob was an older, "been there-done that", first-class tuner/ tech, who had seen just about everything. Or so he thought. One day he went in to tune a badly-out-of-tune grand for a new client. When he finished up and presented the lady with his bill, she said that she had no quarrel with his charges, but that she wasn't going to pay him right away. It seems that the last time her piano was tuned, the tuning didn't hold up for very long, so the lady said that she was going to wait a couple of weeks and then mail Bob a check _if_ his tuning held up. Bob didn't take this news too well, but he didn't punch the lady's lights out. What he did was walk back over to the piano, whip out his tuning hammer and start dropping random strings half an octave or so. In no time at all the piano was totally unplayable. Bob then told the lady what she could do with her check and stormed out! I've often wondered how the lady explained the condition of the piano to the NEXT tuner who showed up. Bob may be gone, but his story--and technique--will live on as long as there are bozos out there who will try to stiff a tuner from receiving a fair rate of pay for a job requiring highly- specialized skills which few people even understand, let alone possess. Les Smith
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