My mistake.....my lesson....a cautionary tale

[David M. Porritt]

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Kevin:

This lady sounds like a PRIME candidate for the self tuning piano!
No shoes in the house, no one to ask to use the bathroom!  She bought
too early.  She should have waited until the self tuning piano was on
the market.

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

On 1/13/2003 at 8:07 PM Kevin E. Ramsey wrote:


    David, don't go all wobbly on us now, buddy. You just got an
overly sensitive "artist" , and by the way, I agree perfectly with
Wim's assessment, and I'm sure the piano sounded just wonderful. If
they wouldn't let you work with the performer to bring it back to
something that would have made them happy, then they're just "nuts",
and I wouldn't worry about it too much. 
    I recently got a service order to set up a new Disklavier C2 in
North Scottsdale. (Think Beverly Hills). It seems that these people
demanded that the piano be delivered in the box. They just didn't
want any piano that had been on the floor, and they didn't want to
come down to the shop and watch it being uncrated, I guess. So I go
up there, it's about an hour drive, and the lady of the house comes
out to greet me, from the garage. She asks me if I can take off my
shoes in the garage, and I say "of course". She's not oriental, but
if she wants me to leave my shoes in the garage, no problem. When I
walk into the house, it's all tile. I'm starting to think; "what, I'm
going to get her tile dirty?"
    I get to the piano, and go to put my tool cases down on the tile,
and she says, "You can't put your cases on my floor, I don't know
where they've been."  (OOhhh, starting to get scary here, says I. )
I also have a nice table that I use to go over the regulation on, and
I guess the rubber casters are not Kosher either. 
    I usually have a cut down moving pad that I carry with me, but
today, I'm driving my Tacoma truck, so she finds some construction
paper and I put that down. I took the case parts off the piano, and
go to put them on the carpet in the sunken lower living room, and she
says; "Don't put that there, you'll leave dents in the carpet."
Well, at least I don't have to worry about her coming at me with an
ax, she'd get blood everywhere!
    So, finally we have it all worked out, I'm going over the action
regulation, pitch raising, seating strings, doing software updates,
calibrating the disklavier,,,,etc. etc. etc. 
    I finally get all done, I just want to go over the tuning once
more, and do a little voicing; it's a lively room, what with all that
tile and all those windows, but you know, after an hour drive and 3
1/2 hours of working on her piano, I've got to get rid of some of
that coffee that I had on the way to the job. So I ask her, "May I
please use a restroom?"  
    I can tell you, I've never felt such a sense of shock as when she
told me; "No, because then I would have to clean it, there's a
construction site about seven or eight lots down, and I think that I
saw one of those portable bathrooms down there." So I said, never
mind, I'll be done here in a couple of minutes. Finished a quick
final tuning and got the heck outta there. I would have been glad to
have voiced it, but you know, if you're that rude, too bad. 

    I realize your experience was totally different, and that you're
taking it as a personal affront to your abilities, but from what I've
read, you seem to have more than enough confidence and knowledge to
succeed in whatever you do. Hey, we deal with people all the time,
some people go through a lot of techs mostly because they can't find
anyone who can put up with them. 

    I hesitate to put my name to this, but I am
    Kevin E. Ramsey
    
_____________________________
David M. Porritt
dporritt@mail.smu.edu
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_____________________________


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