President's message

[Ric Brekne]

Israel Steins message was welcome reading, as are the bulk of the other 
comments coming through.  Someone questioned why I found the journal 
peice disturbing. Well lets take a look at a couple things said here by 
Kent and Ron.

    "I fully admit to some cynicism with regard to customer satisfaction."
    "I won't alter a tuning to its detriment to please a customer"

    "It might be, but probably isn't. How much time is it worth to waste
    finding out?"
    "I've sat through a number of classes in my life (and participated
    in a number of discussions) where so much time was taken up by
    catering to and trying to enlighten the hopelessly lowest common
    denominator"


Yes,  I find this kind of thing disturbing at best, especially in the 
context of this message, especially given the fact that the Presidents 
column is a kind of official face of the PTG. Many non tuners read the 
journal and indeed this list.  And very many indeed are going to react 
as myself and obviously significant numbers of other techs.  I do not as 
a member of this organization subscribe whatsoever to the attitude 
relfected therein, nor do I feel the Presidents column was at all an 
appropriate place for this kind of thing to be taken up to begin with.

As far as the issue itself is concerned.  I would submit that if any 
given technician is experiencing more then a very very occasional 
callback that the techncian should consider the possibility that

    a: one perhaps has a need to actually improve ones tuning /
    technical skills
    b: one perhaps should take a look at the bottom level quality of
    instruments one accepts to work on.

I would also submit that the number of callbacks a professional should 
experience should be so low that none of this is worth worrying about to 
begin with.

That said, when a call back does pop up, I believe a  "better system" is 
to endeavour to turn the situation into a positive experience for both 
myself and the customer. If you have first accepted the job, then give 
the customer the benifit of the doubt. And yes. I do indeed feel the 
effort is << worth it >>. Every time.  

I have full understanding and sympathy for those who read arrogance and 
defensiveness into the Presidents column and comments.  And I have to 
figure that whether one agrees or not, one should be able to acknowledge 
that very many will, both in and outside the PTG.

JMT.

Richard Brekne