Piano Location

[Richard Brekne]

Hi John... this is the kinda thing that makes me storm into some
administrators office and chew them out for their lack of insight and
slousing about with the taxpayers money. Generallly I am in and out before
they get a chance to close their gaping mouths, leaving them wondering just
who in the heck that guy was and whether or not he was insane or not. This
almost without fail leads to that same administrator picking up the phone to
check out the situation out a bit, which in turn leads them to call me in to
the proverbial "carpet" for an apology, in spite of the fact that they are
"appreciative" of getting information. Of course I need to be told that there
are better ways of going about such things... Quite so... grin.. I use this
tactic often enough and do a lot of grinning in between "meetings"..
Administrators are really quite predicatable sorts dont you know...

One time I even called in a local "small time" newspaper and hinted at the
possiblity that millions of norwegian kroners were being rotted away by the
willing ignorance of the administration to address the problem seriously.
This was picked up by the national TV net and both the local and local
division of the national radio stations... caught me a bit off guard with
interviews and a TV appearance, but I managed to keep my cool (grin ... in
spite of a horrible american accent to my norwegian). Well... this past month
I got them to increase my hours from 14 to 21 a week, with 7 of those
earmarked for maintance of instruments, ,,, opened up a small workshop in the
school for action work and minor case repairs, and for the first time in the
conservatories history they are drafting a formal job description to attach
to future contracts with piano techs..

It doesnt harm at all to play a bit of the hard line... in fact it is my
opinion that that is exactly what ails this industry of ours... we techs
simply sit by and take too much s---.

Anyways... nice story John.. Being a Whitefish boy... I know the winters in
Montana.

Skål !

John R Fortiner wrote:

> I tune the pianos for the local school district.  Last Friday, however, I
> did come across one "location" that really broke about all the rules.
> The piano was stored in a storage room off a gym floor ( gym also used as
> a performance area).  That wasn't the really bad part.  In the same
> storage room was a rather small sized UNVENTED electric clothes dryer to
> dry mop heads and dusting cloths for the custodians.  Talk about rapid RH
> swings!!  (This is Montana where the RH is normally too low, but the RH
> in that room measured 76%.)  I won't mention the lint that covered the
> keyboard and the piano's interior or what the small amount of soap
> residue being vented into that room by the dryer is probably doing to the
> action.  Hey, the piano was a Baldwin 243.  Maybe they were trying to
> steam the hammers. :-(
>
> John R. Fortiner
> Billings, MT.
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--
Richard Brekne
Associate PTG, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway