How do you do it ??

[Piannaman@aol.com]

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Tom, Phil, Richard,
 
You guys are BUSY!!!  I would have a hard time keeping up that pace  and 
keeping my sanity--and my marriage--together!  All that said, I feel  fortunate to 
be almost as busy as I want to be.  
 
The majority of it is now home tunings.  It took a few years to reach  the 
point where I have very little, if any, time to do in-store  work.  If I have 
any spare time during a work day, making phone calls  to the month's clients 
generally has a better payoff than doing in-store  work.  But I do feel that I 
owe certain people in the buiness some of  my time for jump-starting my business 
when I needed help.
 
We are a driven lot, and many of us are loners, using this list for  
camaraderie, and as Terry F. says, "the water cooler." It's easy to get so  wrapped up 
in it, we forget other parts of life that are meaningful.   Scheduling time 
off can be really difficult, but it's important to "recreate"  ourselves from 
time to time.  One of the major attractions of this field is  that we have 
control of our schedules(most of the time).
 
I'll be back after my bike ride,
 
Dave Stahl
 
 
 
In a message dated 1/30/05 5:03:48 AM Pacific Standard Time,  
tompiano@bellsouth.net writes:

Richard,
I hope that you realize that you stirred the beehive, so to  speak, with your 
inquiry of " how do you do it?".
For many of us who  have been in this profession for many years, and I use 
the term  "profession" strongly, end up being engulfed into a magnitude of  
procedures that we must master in order to properly address all the things  
which presents itself in this line of work. That being said, it's no  wonder 
that the time allotment that many of us devote (to our work) goes  well 
beyond that of a normal 40 hr. work week. The notion of a 40 hr. week  seems 
like a vacation in retrospect. But you asked the question and I'll  give you 
my spin on the subject.
I normally see 5-7 instruments a day x  5-6 days a week. 70% is concert 
related work as I'm the house technician  for 3 concert venues, plus the 
local Steinway concert technician, plus  being the local Yamaha concert tech 
which adds oodles of engagements  through the course of our busy season. Many 
days I have as many as 4 major  concerts occurring in one day, which means a 
lot of jockeying back and  forth between theatres,meeting with the artists 
making sure everything is  in proper order. In between  those times, I 
sprinkle in a few  customers along the way.
My day usually starts around 6 AM at the one the  theatre and usually 
finishes around 7:30PM or later depending upon if I'm  on standby or not for 
the concerts. I also do a fair bit of rebuilding  which is used for any 
tuning downtime that occurs. Normally there 2- 4  instruments in production, 
as being the case at this time.
So all in  all, my work week usually hovers around 60- 80 hrs. per week. We 
have 4  children and I'm the sole bread winner in our family. I have 2 recent 
 
college graduates and 2 in private school. We live in a very nice area of  
the town, have the nice house, the 2 cars, the whole bit and  caboodle....
Bottom line is that I have found a profession that inspires  me. Yes, there 
are times when it gets to be a bit much, but luckily I have  other interests 
as well that re-energizes the batteries and gives me my  balances. On top of 
this I'm also a professional clarinetist playing with  an excellent orchestra 
and do some free-lancing with other groups when  time permits. I count myself 
as one of the lucky ones who have found a  profession which inspires me and 
gives total satisfaction. It's a  profession that the artist community solely 
depends upon to bring their  performances to top order. Knowing that I have a 
hand in making the  performance scene operate more smoothly gives me great 
pleasure. Thus,  this no longer becomes "work" as it becomes more of a duty 
and obligation  that I have been called to perform.  I take great pride in 
being able  to be apart of such a noble profession. I seriously couldn't 
imagine being  more happy and fulfilled in any other profession.
Tom Servinsky,  RPT

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Bondi"  <phil@philbondi.com>
To: "Pianotech"  <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 5:47  AM
Subject: Re: How do you do it ??


> Richard, the last time  I checked, which is right now, this profession, if 
> you're in it alone  like I am, is a minimum 12 hr. day everyday you call a 
> work day. If  you're tuning 3-4 a day, rebuild, repair, research then 
> you're  looking at 12 hr. days. Some people have spouses to take care of 
> the  paperwork and make scheduling arrangements. That cuts down a little 
>  bit on the time. If I were in the position of having the luxury of having  
> a spouse to take care of the paperwork and scheduling, that person  would 
> already have strong office skills and be a savvy scheduler with  MY time. I 
> don't see that happening anytime soon for  me.
>
> Learning how and when to say no works for  some.
>
> -Phil Bondi(Fl)





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