Internship with Quinlan and Fabish Music Company

 Hello, my name is Mikey Schelinski and over the summer, I interned at Quinlan and Fabish Music Company (Q&F)! Q&F is a music store that focuses on instrument rentals and repair. This company sells student, intermediate, and professional instruments. As a young musician, Q&F was the main place where I purchased all of my equipment and rented to own my first saxophone. When searching for internships, Q&F was certainly one of the places I was very interested in looking into. Having no previous connections, I emailed the company's "help" email account and asked who I could get in touch with to see how to apply for an internship. Within the day, I got a response saying they would love to have me. A few weeks later, I had a phone call with Marsha Orwig, the internship coordinator at Q&F. We talked about the different responsibilities as well as other day-to-day tasks I would be doing as an intern. I immediately felt very comfortable after this phone call and was very excited to start a few months later.

When I first started, I was told that every 2 weeks I would be switching departments to make sure that I worked in every department offered in their Burr Ridge, IL location, which was their headquarters. I started off going on the road with a few of the sales representatives. The first week, I rode with the Sales Representative Manager, Paul Ramsier. He was a great mentor throughout my entire internship, showing me the ropes, introducing me to various friendly people as well as showing me what he does every day. During the second week, I rode with various other reps to see their routes as well as how they did their job differently. This was a very taxing first few weeks as I was on the road all the time and working about 60-70 hours total between both weeks. 

The third and fourth week I was in the repair shop refurbishing string instruments. I am a saxophone player, so when I was told I would be working on string instruments, I was very nervous because I knew nothing about them, really at all. I was working with numerous different experts and they helped me out every day, challenging me more and more as I got comfortable as each day went on. I went from knowing nothing about these instruments to being able to take everything apart, appropriately cleaning them, restringing violins and violas, as well as tuning, and taping the fingerboards for the incoming students. This was probably my favorite few weeks during my internship because I got to learn something brand new and meet a bunch of experienced repair techs.

Weeks five and six were split between the marketing department and the accounting department. These were an interesting few weeks for sure. In the mornings of the first week, I would spend my time in the accounting department filing rental contracts, stuffing envelopes, and learning how to put money in customer's accounts from their credits. In the afternoon, I would head to the marketing department which was made up of one person, Travis Rosenthal. He showed me how the website operates, what the company's plans were for the future, as well as showed me the analytics of different parts of the company. Travis also runs all the social media accounts for the company, so he briefly showed me different tools he uses to make his job easier. Travis was so much fun to work with because he was such a kind person and you could tell he was one of those guys who got along with everyone. Although I did not get much time with him, I was very happy I got to work with him. For week six, I stayed in the accounting department all day.

Weeks seven and eight were quite difficult for me, I spent my time in the warehouse learning how to take inventory, pull and stuff outgoing orders, as well as unboxing various different instruments and accessories to get ready to be rented or sent to other stores. I met a lot of great people during this time. Everyone was very friendly and very easy to have a conversation with but knew exactly when to get back to work and taught me how to do everything very well at this point. 

For my last two weeks with the company, I spent my time in the retail store. While I mostly shadowed during these two weeks, I got to see how the store works. I was fortunate enough to help a few customers with saxophone questions. I got to help a few people with instrument trials as well as learn about the various professional-level instrument shops Q&F runs. Windy City Trumpets, Flutes, and Trombones are sub-stores that Q&F appoints people within the company to run who are pros when it comes to these instruments. I was fortunate to work with Mike Edwards, General Manager of the Montgomery Q&F store. Mike also runs Windy City Trumpets. In the four days I spent at this location, Mike taught me a lot about trumpets, how a store that does not get much foot traction survives as well as teaching me the rights and wrongs of job interviews, and how important it is to build connections. Although I did not spend much time with Mike and his crew, I really valued the time with them because it was very fun to learn how they operate.

Quinlan and Fabish was an outstanding place to do my internship. I got to know countless people who were all so nice and loved music. I built so many connections and am looking forward to using this knowledge that I learned here in my professional career. If I could give any piece of advice to someone looking for an internship is to just ask at any place that interests you as well as enjoy every moment you can, because it flew by for me.

I am incredibly grateful for my experience at Q&F and am very glad I had the opportunity to work for such a caring company.