clothing

[Piannaman@AOL.COM]

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The beauty of our profession and of being self-employed is that we get to 
call our own shots when it comes to personal choices like clothing(I'm sure 
we'll talk about the bad parts of being your own boss next April...-).  As 
long as you don't offend the customer by being so untidy and unwashed that 
they mistake you for a homeless beggar, I don't see the vast majority of 
piano owners out there having an issue with what their piano tech wears.  It 
seems like people are so mystified and enthralled by what we do, that we 
could do our work in thongs without offending.  If you do that, though, watch 
out where you point the heat gun, and be careful when doing string work! 

Dave Stahl

In a message dated 6/21/02 8:24:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
sckline@attbi.com writes:
> 
> At 11:36 AM 6/22/2002 +1000, Scott wrote:
> >But it does make it into a tax deductible shirt!
> >And there i was thinking it would look MORE professional to have a
> >uniform.
> 
> I'd feel like a complete doofus wearing (an extra-large) shop
> uniform with "Susan" embroidered above the left pocket. Maybe I
> could do that on Halloween! This style of couture belongs almost
> always to male professions. Actually, I think that the named
> uniform tends to suggest people working as employees of a
> company in groups. Someone in an auto shop wears a uniform
> saying "Johnnie" because a car owner calling in and wanting
> to find out what has been done to his car will be asked which
> mechanic is working on it. Or, if someone comes in a van to
> repair the furnace, and then it emits black smoke, whoever
> is fielding complaints will ask, "which of our guys came out?"
> 
> For people who are self-employed, and often work alone, the
> embroidered name doesn't seem to fit. It also does have a blue-collar
> feeling. In piano work we're not quite blue or white collar. We
> defy categories. Many of us have advanced degrees. Lots of us
> are "retreads". I think that by daring to freelance the way
> we do, just ignoring and forgetting about all those "benefits"
> which the rest of the world think they can't live without,
> we've earned the right to invent our own styles.
> 
> Clean, reasonably neat, and comfortable has always worked for me,
> but I don't think of clothing as showing professionalism. I believe
> that customers perceive professionalism initially from what I say
> and later on from what I do, and from how I explain what I'm
> doing. The biggest boost to a customer's sense that I'm professional
> comes when I've fixed something that no one else fixed, especially
> if they tried and failed to fix it. And always, in the background,
> is musicianship. You don't have to wear that, or launder it, or
> even think about it much. But what better to take into a piano customer's
> home?
> 
> Susan
> 



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