Another Winter Out of It

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town an enquiry came on foot and was answered on the doorstep, so no man answered one without first seeing the house. This one borrows your century, where enquiries arrive on a screen and are answered within the minute by something that has never been up a ladder.

Two roofers in one town, the same ladders and the same lead.
Both bought the same machine that writes, and set it on their enquiries.
One let it answer everything, being pleased with how well it wrote.
The other let it answer only the questions whose answer was the same at every address.
Same machine, same eleven enquiries in the week, same rain in February.
Which of the two was sent for in the spring?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two roofers in the town I have never named, though this one has a ring road in it. Two men and a van apiece. Both bought the same thing in the same March: a program that reads what a householder has written and answers in your name before you are down the ladder. The first was delighted with his, which wrote better than he did, so he gave it the lot.

Eleven enquiries came in a week that September, all answered inside two minutes. The tenth was from a householder with a flat roof and a bucket on the utility floor, asking whether it might be patched again, as it had been two years before. The machine answered the question she asked. Yes, that can be patched, a hundred and ninety pounds, Tuesday week. She said yes.

He went on the Tuesday and saw from the ladder what the machine could not. The felt had gone brittle right across and water had stood at the low end long enough to leave a tidemark. A price had been named in his name and taken, so he patched it and said nothing, being a man of his word. In February the ceiling stained and he went back for nothing. In April the whole roof was re-covered by a firm two streets off, the man who patched it being the man it had leaked for.

The second roofer spent a wet half hour before he switched his on, with an envelope and two columns. In the first, the messages whose answer is the same at every address: are you coming Tuesday, where shall I leave the key, here is the invoice. In the second, those whose answer depends on one house: anything mentioning water indoors, anything asking whether a thing can be made to last, anything asking a figure for work nobody has seen. His machine had the first column, and a rule for the second: anything mentioning a leak, a price, or how long a thing has left waits for me.

Eleven came to him that week too. Seven were answered in under a minute without him; four waited, and he took them from the van at dinner, four minutes apiece. The flat roof was among them. He wrote that he would not price a patch he had not stood on, and that a patch on felt of that age buys one winter and costs you the next. He went on the Thursday and sent two figures with reasons. She took the re-covering in October.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Give a machine the work whose right answer is the same at every address, and keep for yourself the work whose right answer depends on the one address it came from. That is the whole division, made on an envelope in half an hour.

Here is why it falls that way. A machine answers the question as it was put, and the one in the story was not wrong to. A man of your trade answers instead the question the customer would have put if he knew what you know, and nearly all your expertise lives in that gap, which the customer cannot carry you across, not knowing it is there. She asked about a patch when the matter was a covering at the end of its life, being a woman with a bucket and not a roofer.

So the test is a question about the answer rather than the question. Would the right answer change if this had come from another house, in another condition? If not, the work is clerk's work and you should give it away today. If so, it is yours, and fine writing will not make a program able to do it.

Most of what arrives passes that test as clerk's work, seven of eleven, and in most weeks more. So this is no argument for doing it all yourself at half past nine at night: giving away the seven buys you twenty minutes for the four.

The danger sits in the middle, in the message dressed as clerk's work that is not. Nothing in a question about a few slates tells you that a thousand pounds and a stained ceiling stand behind it. This is the other half of the words your tools send out under your name. There the fault was the wording. Here the wording is excellent and the judgement absent, the costlier fault, and it reaches the customer looking just like the sound sort: a machine wrong in precisely the voice it is right in.

You will be told the machines will shortly make this judgement too, and perhaps they will. But see what it is made of. Not words: a foot on the felt, a tidemark, a lap lifted with a thumb. Until a thing can get on your roof, the division stands.

Two cautions. Do not let the machine do the sorting. Given leave to answer whatever it judges straightforward, it judges by words and not by what is at stake. Sort on a plain condition it cannot interpret: a list of named words, any job above a figure, any reply to a complaint. And the held ones must be answered quickly, or you gain nothing. One answered at ten at night is worse than a hasty answer at nine, the customer having had a day to send elsewhere.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Would the answer change at another address? Mark the last twenty messages you sent a customer same or particular. Those marked same are the machine's work from today, and there will be more than you expect.
2. Which of the particular ones arrive dressed as ordinary? Name the three enquiries in your trade that read like a price list question and never are. Their words go into the rule that holds a message back.
3. When do I read what has been held? Name two hours of the day and keep them. A message held for a man with no hour appointed to read it is only a slower form of the fault you meant to mend.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of the two was sent for in the spring?

The second, and the whole difference was two columns on an envelope. Both machines were quick and well spoken. One was handed the single question no machine could answer, whether an old felt roof had another winter in it, and answered in the voice it kept for invoices. The other was given the invoices, and kept for himself the question that wanted a ladder.

The verse:

The machine can name you Tuesday,
and the guarantee, and the key;
but what winters the felt has left in it
is a thing you climb to see.

Until next time. Go and mark your last twenty sent messages same or particular, and give the same ones away.

P.S. Watch your own replies and the division tells you one more thing. The first half of a particular reply is usually the half you wrote last time: why a patch on old felt buys a winter and costs you the next. That half is clerk's work hiding inside your own. Put those paragraphs where the machine can fetch them, and keep for your hand the sentences naming this house.

Also in the archive: The Fortnight in Pencil, Eight Hundred at Once and Everything but the Name.