Acronym use Was: Speed, etc

[Conrad Hoffsommer]

Listers,

Sorry for the slight staleness to the thread... It was a long busy weekend.



Billbrpt,

I'm a tad bit disappointed in you right now.  What gives you the right to
interject a term (actually an acronym) into a discussion, then turn right
around and denigrate anyone who has ever used that same term? (Pssst, 
Bill - you used it.)


Quoth Bill:
>>Any difficulty
>>whatsoever, any challenge, any inconvenience, any situation that requires
>>effort and skill that a piano technician can make money at merits the
piano a
>>PSO designation.  

>>The other, POS, you are right about.  It represents only a further 
>>degradation of attitude on the part of someone who does not like the normal 
>>challenges of our work. Many people stoop to saying it in a moment of
disgust 
>>or frustration 


I agree that POS is not a nice term, but we use euphemisms for not nice
things 
everywhere else in our language.  Why not here?  Just a bit presumptuous as 
to the attitudes and motivations of other technicians, though, aren't we?
I, for 
one, use effort and apparent skill to meet the challenges of maintaining
heavily 
used Baldwin and Steinway concert grands. It is a bit inconvenient to be at
work 
at 5AM so that I can work on them uninterrupted.  I'm not starving, so one 
might infer that I am making _some_ money at it.  By the definition in that 
first paragraph of yours which I quoted above, I should be calling D's and 
SD10's "PSO's", right?  

As the outspoken proponent for, and former employee of, a make which, 
as many on this list would agree, has produced more than it's fair 
share of keyboard adorned furniture, couldn't you grant that (for some 
technicians) working on them and other less-than-concert-grade alleged 
instruments might just be frustrating?  (Perhaps actually working on 
concert instruments colors our thinking by acquainting us with what a 
piano _could_  and  _should_ be like.)

Could you also grant that this frustration could possibly arise, NOT 
from a lack of said technician's ability, experience, expertise or dearth 
of desire, but from a genuine and abiding desire to always leave the 
customer with a musically satisfying instrument?  This frustration 
mant times comes from the effort to "make a silk purse out of a sow's 
ear".  Only the rare owner of this class of instrument seems to realize, 
much less admit,  (even after repeated hints to the contrary) that their 
precious Wurlestrimbalinter artist model 35" spinet has 0% silk content.

i.e. High customer expectation + low instrument capability = high technician
anxiety and frustration trying to keep the customer happy. {and keep the
customer/future profit}

We rejoice with you that you are able to deal with the lesser makes with
alacrity and ability, making them all silken and lining your purse in the 
process.  We also are proud to know a technician who doesn't ever have 
"a moment of disgust or frustration", so would never have cause to even 
_think_ of a scatological acronym.

We are not rejoicing in your castigation of persons who use a term which you
yourself injected - but then again, you are Bill, and we are not.  



Conrad Hoffsommer - mailto:hoffsoco@luther.edu
             Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.  

***If you receive something that says "Send this to everyone you know",
                >>>>> pretend you don't know me. <<<<<
.