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Alan,
<p>Every customer of mine gets an appointment reminder card several days
in advance. The card states, "A quiet atmosphere will help me do
the best job for you." It is a rare situation where I need to deal
with noise. If you don't do mailings, you could just say something
to that effect as you conclude your phone conversation. Stop the
problem before it starts.
<p>(Sometimes I am scheduled to tune the piano while the cleaning lady
is there. Since she never got the card, I have a polite little conversation
with her about vacuum cleaner noise, then we work things out the best we
can.)
<p>But yours is an already existing situation. One option is to just
put up with it; it adds color to your otherwise boring work day.
<G> But if it makes you not want to tune there anymore, you could
say something to the customer.
<p>I would probably go this direction: "Mr (Mrs./Ms.) Tickabong,
I apologize for not mentioning this to you before, but you should know
that I find it very difficult to give your piano a good tuning with all
the competition from the clocks. Tuning a piano involves listening
very closely for indicators that are sometimes barely audible.
<br> "I don't think I can bring
myself to tune your piano again under these circumstances, so we have a
couple options. One would be for you to stop all the clocks before
I arrive. If you do not want to do that, then I would encourage you
to look for another piano tuner, one for whom the noise is no problem.
What are your thoughts on how we should handle this?" Then take it
from there.
<p>Someone else suggested we should just learn to tune with the distracting
noises around us. That's actually a pretty good idea, but I'm getting
old and grouchy now and set in my ways. So I'll leave these noisy
settings to those who specialize in this kind of work. :-)
I have enough to do without those jobs.
<p>Regards,
<br>Clyde
<p>"Alan R. Barnard" wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE><font face="Arial"><font size=-1>Situation: Customer
collects clocks. Regulators. Cuckoos. Mantels. Grandmothers and Grandfathers.
Novelty Clocks. All kinda clocks...tick, ticka, tickety, tickaty, bong,
chime, gong, wang, ding, ticka, tick ... None in sync with any other and
all slightly off from each other as they strike the quarter hours ... Bbang
bbongong bbbing boonng....</font></font> <font face="Arial"><font size=-1>Question:
Would it be "rude" or, in some other way, socially unacceptable to take
my 2 1/2 pound stringing sledge and start adjusting these little treasures?</font></font></blockquote>
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