Eleven Doors and None Hung

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two joiners on the lane behind the brewery, and the difference between them was the plainest I ever saw a trade turn upon.

Two joiners in the town I have never named, the same deal and the same bench.
Both worked from first light, and neither man was idle a morning all year.
One had eleven jobs standing about his shop, the other had three.
The busier man was behind with his rent and short with his timber merchant.
The quieter man was paid up, and took the same work at the same figure.
Same hours, same trade, same prices. How?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two joiners, both good enough: doors, window sashes, a dresser, a staircase when the builder was civil about his measurements. The first was the more obliging, and the whole lane said so. A householder came in on Monday wanting a door, so he cleared a corner of the bench and began it Monday. The farmer came in on Tuesday wanting gates, and those were begun on Tuesday, since he could not bear to make a man wait a fortnight for a start. By the end of the month eleven jobs stood about his shop, all begun. The dresser against the wall had no back on it. A door stood in the clamps with one coat on, wanting its beading and a handle.

None of it was neglected, exactly. He touched all of it, fourteen hours a day. But look at what each touch cost. To go back to the staircase he had to find the rod he had marked the rise on, remember which way he had settled to run the housings, and set the saw up again for a cut he had set up for once already: half an hour gone before a shaving came off. And at the end of each long day nothing had left the shop, so no bill could be written.

The second joiner worked to a rule written inside the lid of his tool chest, and the rule was three. Three jobs in the shop at once and no more. He took orders beyond that gladly, with a date against them, and said so plainly at the counter: I can start your door the week after next and have it hung on the Friday. When a job reached the stage the first man left things at, he put the beading on, the handle on, carried it to the cart and wrote the bill that evening. Then, and not before, he took the next thing out of his book.

By Michaelmas the obliging man had eleven householders who each knew their work was begun and not finished, and said so in the market. The quieter man had people who had waited a fortnight and then told the parish that what he says he will do is done by the Friday he names. The first worked the longer hours and had the fuller book, and was much the poorer. He thought his trouble was being too busy. It was that nothing was finished.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Work that is nine parts finished is not nine parts paid, it is not paid at all, and a shop full of nearly finished work is a shop working hard for nothing. Your trade pays you for neither effort nor progress. It pays at the moment a thing crosses the line and can be billed, and every hour sitting on your side of that line is money you have already spent and not yet earned.

Begin with the arithmetic of holding it. An unfinished job is not inert. It takes bench and floor, and it takes memory, the dearest room you own: eleven open jobs are eleven sets of measurements and half-decisions in one head, and a head carrying eleven is slower at all of them. Worse, each return charges you again for a setting up you had paid for once, and that half hour of remembering cannot be billed to anybody.

Then consider which tenth gets postponed, for it is never a random tenth. Starting is the pleasant part: fresh timber, interesting thinking, a customer grateful you have begun. The last tenth is beading, snagging, the awkward word about a hinge that will not sit, and the writing of the bill. So the drift of a willing man is always towards beginning. That is a tilt in the floor rather than a failing of character, and the remedy for a tilted floor is a chock.

The chock is a number. Decide how many jobs may be open at one time, write it down, and begin no new one until one leaves finished and billed. Three suits most trades, and it does you two services. It forces the last tenth to the front, since the only road to the new job runs through finishing an old one, and it makes your promises true, for a man with three open jobs knows what he may say at the counter where a man with eleven is guessing. A day with a named end and a shop with a named limit are the same device. The limit also shows which jobs you had stopped deciding about, since the oldest thing in a shop waits on a judgement.

Two cautions. Finished means the line the customer judges and the bill can follow: the handle on, the mess swept, the bill in their hand. It is not another afternoon of improvement nobody asked for, which is the same disease in a better coat. And the limit is on starting, not on selling. Keep taking orders, in a book with honest dates, naming the day the work will be done rather than the day it begins. A householder does not want his door begun. He wants it hung on a named Friday.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. How many jobs are open tonight? Count everything begun and not yet billed. The figure is always higher than a man guesses, and seeing it written is half the cure.
2. Which open job is nearest done, and what is left on it? Write the remainder as one line of plain words. If it is under an hour of work it is not a job, it is a debt you are paying interest on, and it should be gone by tomorrow night.
3. What is my number? Pick how many jobs you will allow at once, write it where you take orders, and let the next caller hear a finish date instead of a start.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same hours, same trade, same prices, and the man with three jobs about his shop was paid up while the man with eleven was behind with his rent. How?

Because the first man was paid for finished doors and owned eleven unfinished ones. Every hour in those eleven was timber bought and labour spent on the wrong side of the line, earning nothing and charging him a fresh setting up at every return. The second did less work in the year and finished all of it, so all of it turned into money. One had a rule about starting. The other had none.

The verse:

A door that wants its handle is a door that wants its price,
And nine parts of a staircase is a staircase that is none.
So put the beading on the job you are the weariest of,
For nothing in the shop is yours until the thing is done.

Until next time. Go and count every job you have begun and not billed, then finish the nearest done before you touch anything new.

P.S. There is a kinder use for the rule. With a limit in force, the only honest way to take on more work is to shorten the time a job spends in your shop, which sets you looking at the right thing: not how fast you cut, but how long a job waits between the cuts. In most trades the waiting is the greater half, and costs nothing to remove.

Also in the archive: The Trough Across the Yard, Before the First Ladder and Eleven Things in March.