overbooked

[Wimblees@aol.com]

Overbooked

Chris Trivilas, in his "Touchup Revisited: article in the September Journal,
mentioned the dilemna of having one of your best customers call at the last
minute for a tuning. I had that situation happend a couple of months ago. On
a Thursday evening I got a call from the choir director of a large church
with many pianos, for whom I have been tuning for 8 years, (and in the market
for one of my rebuilt grands), to tune the piano in the sacntuary before
Saturday, when he had 3 weddings scheduled. With no time on the calander
on Friday, I had 3 options. 1. Work an extra couple of hours on
Friday, 2. Cancell one of my appointments, on 3. Recommend another tuner.


Since my wife and I had tickets to the symphony Friday night, I couldn't work
the extra hours. I thought about cancelling one of my other customers,
figuring that one of them wouldn't know the difference why I cancelled. But
then maybe this customer belonged to a church with a lot of pianos, or needed
her piano rebuilt, or had a friend who needed her piano rebuilt. I have never
cancelled one appointment to schedule another. I have cancelled because I was
sick, or because of an emergency, but never to schedule another
appointment, and I didn't want to set a president to do that. So I did what I
thought was best. I recommended he find another tuner. Since I didn't know
the
schedules of the other RPT's in the chapter, I just told him to call someone.

I haven't heard from this choir director since he called me, to tune the
other pianos at the church. I have been wondering if I lost him to a
competitor, or is he mad at me for not dropping everything to take care of
him, or is he just late getting around to calling me?

The question I have is this. Should I have given up the tickets to the
symphony? Should I have cancelled one of my other appointments? Did I do the
right thing?

What are some thoughts and opinions on the matter.

Willem Blees  RPT
St. Louis