clothing

[David M. Porritt]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
This talk of wearing a suit and tie to raise the level of our
professionalism reminds me of the chimney sweeps who wear a Tux to
show that it is a noble profession.

dave
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 6/22/02 at 9:01 AM Piannaman@AOL.COM wrote:
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 
_____________________________
David M. Porritt
dporritt@mail.smu.edu
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_____________________________


---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/06/c4/45/f3/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--