Etiquette in the Customer's Home

[Clyde Hollinger]

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Alan,

Every customer of mine gets an appointment reminder card several days in
advance.  The card states, "A quiet atmosphere will help me do the best
job for you."  It is a rare situation where I need to deal with noise.
If you don't do mailings, you could just say something to that effect as
you conclude your phone conversation.  Stop the problem before it
starts.

(Sometimes I am scheduled to tune the piano while the cleaning lady is
there.  Since she never got the card, I have a polite little
conversation with her about vacuum cleaner noise, then we work things
out the best we can.)

But yours is an already existing situation.  One option is to just put
up with it; it adds color to your otherwise boring work day.  <G>  But
if it makes you not want to tune there anymore, you could say something
to the customer.

I would probably go this direction:  "Mr (Mrs./Ms.) Tickabong, I
apologize for not mentioning this to you before, but you should know
that I find it very difficult to give your piano a good tuning with all
the competition from the clocks.  Tuning a piano involves listening very
closely for indicators that are sometimes barely audible.
        "I don't think I can bring myself to tune your piano again under
these circumstances, so we have a couple options.  One would be for you
to stop all the clocks before I arrive.  If you do not want to do that,
then I would encourage you to look for another piano tuner, one for whom
the noise is no problem.  What are your thoughts on how we should handle
this?"  Then take it from there.

Someone else suggested we should just learn to tune with the distracting
noises around us.  That's actually a pretty good idea, but I'm getting
old and grouchy now and set in my ways.  So I'll leave these noisy
settings to those who specialize in this kind of work.  :-)  I have
enough to do without those jobs.

Regards,
Clyde

"Alan R. Barnard" wrote:

> Situation: Customer collects clocks. Regulators. Cuckoos. Mantels.
> Grandmothers and Grandfathers. Novelty Clocks. All kinda
> clocks...tick, ticka, tickety, tickaty, bong, chime, gong, wang, ding,
> ticka, tick ... None in sync with any other and all slightly off from
> each other as they strike the quarter hours ... Bbang bbongong bbbing
> boonng.... Question: Would it be "rude" or, in some other way,
> socially unacceptable to take my 2 1/2 pound stringing sledge and
> start adjusting these little treasures?

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