Eat My Ass, Melhart Music Center

Where I live, Melhart Music Center is something of an institution. It’s one of the only local music shops that’s still standing after the invasion of the almighty Guitar Center. But that’s not important. Honestly, I could have just gotten to the point of this entry without the tiny intro. Yet I persist in typing. I think that maybe at some point you’ll get the hint and stop reading this and just jump to the next paragraph. It’d be a good idea to right about now. I’m going to start calling you names pretty soon if you don’t. Seriously, stop reading this. Oh my God, why are you still reading this paragraph? Well, you asked for it, fish face. See. You brought that on yourself. Don’t you just feel ashamed? Okay, I’m going to start the real entry now.

So I had volunteered to ply my sexy musicality all over the lobby of Cine El Rey for a friend who was screening a movie he appeared in and helped write. The movie was shot locally and it was very neat-o. Now, I didn’t know what to expect for this gig. Was I going to be on stage? Would I need a mic? Acoustic? Electric? In the end I decided to dust off the ol’ Stratocaster and borrow a friend’s amp. But lo! I hadn’t picked up my Strat in ages. Years, even. So I decided I should go to Melhart Music Center and get it restrung, since that is one of the services they offer. Here’s where the nightmare starts.

The guy who does repairs/string replacement isn’t in when I take the guitar. No big deal, though. One of the floor grunts happily takes my guitar off my hands, reassuring me that once the guy gets in he’ll, to use his words, “knock it out”. I figure this shouldn’t take too terribly long, maybe an hour, two tops. I quietly begin to think to myself, maybe I’d have saved time had I just bought the strings and changed them myself. But no, I thought, it shouldn’t be that big a deal. I can change my own strings I just freakin’ hate it with all of my being! So I go and fill up the wife’s car with gas, pay the internet bill, tool around a Best Buy and fill up an hour with pointless meandering.

A bit over an hour I call the tech line. No answer. No big, I think. I’ll just show up. If it’s not done, fine. I’ll just do it myself. When I get back, I check with the guy who does repairs. He finally came in! He was sort of just sitting there chatting with some dude but I didn’t think he was slacking on the job. Honest. I didn’t think about it at all. Not until I asked him about my guitar.

“Oh that won’t be ready ’til about Tuesday.”

“For a string change?” I ask, eyebrows raised, tone even yet incredulous.

“Yup. I do them in the order they come in.”

Now far be it from me to second guess a man’s work priorities… wait, yes. Yes I will. Seriously? You don’t prioritize string replacement? I mean, sure, a big job needs to get done, but string changes don’t take terribly long, especially for a seasoned tech who doesn’t give two shits about the instrument they’re servicing so I figure you can do a restring in about ten minutes if even that long. I asked for my guitar back, bought the damn strings and changed them myself.

So there. Eat my ass, Melhart Music Center. You inconvenienced me for a grand total of about an hour and a half and I have rained my vengeance upon thee via the internet. Suck it!