On the job at the SDUSD - 05/03/13 05:11 AM
Day 4 as the SDUSD piano tech:
Including the Shout House, I've tuned 15 pianos so far this week, and if things go according to plan, I'll get at least three more in tomorrow. At the start of the week, there was a backlog of 56 work orders. My goal is to clear them by the end of the school year.
I work for the equipment repair division of Physical Plant Operations; after all, pianos are equipment, right?
My work day runs from 6am to 2:30pm currently, but, once I'm made permanent and I get a better sense of schedules at the various sites I see the most, I can change my hours to suit.
I'm learning that the biggest challenge is to avoid wild goose chases. I receive work orders, which are either planned maintenance, or a work request. So far, they have very generic information on them; no contact person, and the piano is in no way specifically identified. So, I have to call each site, try to find out who the key individual is, find out which piano(s) need what work, then schedule a time when the piano(s) will be available for me to work on them. I've had two instances already, where, after contacting the site and finding who I thought was the key person (it can be either or both the head custodian or one of the music teachers), got a time scheduled, then went out, only to find the piano(s) are unavailable, and, in one instance where a stage dolly needed to be installed on a grand, it was the wrong site; all of their grands already had stage dollies.
My plan is to put together a little black book of who the key people are at each site. so I'l know who to call next time. It turns out this is the challenge for just about every department at PPO.
Also, it's apparent that the district doesn't have anything close to an accurate inventory of what pianos they have. We're estimating that it is probably more like 600+ pianos. My solution to that is to carry a stack of new inventory item sheets, and fill one out for every piano I see at a site. So far, there has been one case of a fairly new school - with new pianos - missing one (fearing it might be in someone's home!), and two sites where there were as many as twice the number of pianos there than the master list had on it. Once again, no specific identification of individual pianos.
Your tax dollars at work...
Over the long haul, I still want to grade the pianos based on condition, but, for now, I think it's more important to get a sense of what we have.
Including the Shout House, I've tuned 15 pianos so far this week, and if things go according to plan, I'll get at least three more in tomorrow. At the start of the week, there was a backlog of 56 work orders. My goal is to clear them by the end of the school year.
I work for the equipment repair division of Physical Plant Operations; after all, pianos are equipment, right?
My work day runs from 6am to 2:30pm currently, but, once I'm made permanent and I get a better sense of schedules at the various sites I see the most, I can change my hours to suit.
I'm learning that the biggest challenge is to avoid wild goose chases. I receive work orders, which are either planned maintenance, or a work request. So far, they have very generic information on them; no contact person, and the piano is in no way specifically identified. So, I have to call each site, try to find out who the key individual is, find out which piano(s) need what work, then schedule a time when the piano(s) will be available for me to work on them. I've had two instances already, where, after contacting the site and finding who I thought was the key person (it can be either or both the head custodian or one of the music teachers), got a time scheduled, then went out, only to find the piano(s) are unavailable, and, in one instance where a stage dolly needed to be installed on a grand, it was the wrong site; all of their grands already had stage dollies.
My plan is to put together a little black book of who the key people are at each site. so I'l know who to call next time. It turns out this is the challenge for just about every department at PPO.
Also, it's apparent that the district doesn't have anything close to an accurate inventory of what pianos they have. We're estimating that it is probably more like 600+ pianos. My solution to that is to carry a stack of new inventory item sheets, and fill one out for every piano I see at a site. So far, there has been one case of a fairly new school - with new pianos - missing one (fearing it might be in someone's home!), and two sites where there were as many as twice the number of pianos there than the master list had on it. Once again, no specific identification of individual pianos.
Your tax dollars at work...
Over the long haul, I still want to grade the pianos based on condition, but, for now, I think it's more important to get a sense of what we have.