Eleven Small Wages

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. We leave the old town this once, it having no screens in it, and I set you down in your own century among the soot.

Two chimney sweeps in one town, the same brushes and the same vans.
Both swept the same number of flues, and both charged the same for each.
Both kept their bookings on a screen, and neither worked the longer week.
One paid for eleven things by the month, the other for four.
The man with four had the tidier records and the quieter evenings.
Which was which, and what did he do four times a year with a bank statement and a pencil?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two chimney sweeps, then, in a town I shall still not name, though this time the vans are white and the brushes go round on a motor. Both set up within a month of each other, and both bought the same program for their bookings at nine pounds a month, being glad to be rid of a soft-backed diary that went into a wet pocket.

The first man added to it, as any sensible person does. The booking program made a poor invoice, so he took a second thing that made good ones. Then a thing to send the reminder the evening before, because he was tired of telephoning. Then a thing that asked customers for a review, a man at a trade evening having said he could not work without it. Then somewhere for the photographs from the flue camera, the telephone being full. Then a better calendar, a website he could edit himself, and somewhere for the photographs again, the first place being full as well. Eleven charges in the end, between four pounds and thirty, not one of them foolish on the day it was agreed.

What it looked like four years on was a kitchen table at ten at night, soot in the creases of his hands, nine passwords on the back page of a diary, and a householder in Mill Lane whose address he held in three places and had right in one, though he could not say which. The reminders went out from one program and the invoices from another, and neither knew the job had moved to the Thursday, so the lady had a reminder for a visit that no longer existed and a bill for one that did. He spent an hour a week carrying his own information between his own tools, and he called that hour paperwork rather than what it was, which was the rent on eleven servants he had never once dismissed.

The second man did one thing differently, and it took him an evening. In his second year he sat down with three months of bank statements and ruled a sheet into three columns: the name of the charge, the amount, and in his own words the job it did. Eleven lines, and the sheet told him at a glance what four years of paying would not have. Two of his tools were doing one job between them, and one charge he could not account for at all.

Then he put a mark in his diary for the first working day of every quarter, and when the day came he read his sheet and asked of every line the same short question. If nobody were paying for this, would I take it on this week at that price. The reminder thing passed. The review thing did not, having sent eleven requests in a year and brought back two. The second storage did not, being a cupboard holding what sat in another cupboard. The better calendar did not, the old one being good enough once he had learned it.

He got the photographs out before he cancelled anything, which cost him a Sunday afternoon and saved him a great deal. He kept four charges, and his records lived in one place, so when a job moved to the Thursday it had moved everywhere.

Be fair to the first man. He was not extravagant, and nothing he bought was a swindle. He simply never arrived at a month in which anybody asked him whether he still wanted the thing, because no such month is ever scheduled.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A thing you pay for by the month is not a purchase you made once, it is a decision you renew every month by saying nothing. The arrangement is built that way on purpose. Beginning is a single pleasant act, continuing asks nothing of you at all, and stopping asks for a deliberate one that no calendar will ever prompt. You decided for that tool once, with enthusiasm. You have decided for it forty times since, in silence, and you were not consulted on any of those occasions.

Understand what the silence costs, because the money is the smaller half of it. Every tool you keep takes a share of your attention, a password, an update that moves the buttons about, a thing that can break on a Friday, and one more place where your information lives. That last is the dear one. Where two tools hold the same customer your records disagree, and on the day it matters you will believe the wrong one, which is the whole argument of keeping your information in one place. The eleven were not eleven costs. They were eleven costs, eleven passwords, eleven things to keep in repair and three versions of a lady in Mill Lane.

Note that the question to ask is not whether a tool is worth the money. Ask that and you will defend it, because you are no longer judging a tool, you are judging a decision you already made and would rather not have been wrong about. Ask instead whether you would take it on today, at today's price, knowing what you now know. That way of putting it lifts the fact of owning the thing out of the scales and leaves only the job and the cost of doing it. It is an awkward question to put to your own cupboard, and the awkwardness is the sign that it is the right one.

Someone will say this is small beer, and that no trade was won or lost over nine pounds a month. There is something in that, and it deserves an answer. The sum is not the case. The case is that a decision which renews itself by silence is a habit, and habits do not stay politely inside a bank statement. It is the same mechanism as the market stall nine miles off that a man keeps because the rent is already paid. The bank statement is simply the easiest place to practise seeing standing arrangements at all, since there the facts are written down by somebody other than you.

Two cautions. Get your information out before you cancel the thing that holds it, and open it elsewhere to be sure it is really there, since cancelling takes a minute and recovering can take a month or prove impossible, which is the business of the copy you have never once taken out. And do not let the question become a sport. Some tools earn slowly, the accounts, the customer list, the copy kept off the premises, and the test for those is whether the job is being done, not whether you touched it this week. A man who changes the thing he works in every quarter has found a new way to spend his evenings, not a saving.

Three questions, and the first can be answered before you put the lamp out:

1. What does your bank say you pay for by the month, and what job does each one do? Write it from the statement rather than from memory. The list in your head is always the shorter list, and the charge you have forgotten is usually the oldest.
2. Which job on that sheet appears twice? Two tools doing one job is not thoroughness. It is two sets of records that will differ, and an hour a week of carrying information between them that you have stopped calling work.
3. If nobody were already paying for this, would you take it on this week at that price? Ask it of every line, then name the day you will ask again, because a question you mean to get round to is not a question.

The Answer to the Riddle

One paid for eleven things by the month, the other for four, and the man with four had the tidier records and the quieter evenings. Which was which, and what did he do four times a year with a bank statement and a pencil?

The second sweep had the four. He had begun with the same eleven as the other man and let none of them renew unexamined. Four times a year he read the charges off his own statement, wrote beside each the job it did, and asked whether he would take that job on at that price if he were starting this week. Seven lines failed the question, and he took his records out before he let any of them go.

The verse:

Eleven servants on your books,
And none of them will go.
They do not ask to be kept on.
They wait for you to ask.

Until next time. Go and get your last three months of bank statements, write down every charge for a tool with the job it does beside it, and put a mark in your diary for the first working day of the quarter.

P.S. Mark on your sheet which charges you agreed to on the strength of a free month. That month is not a gift. It is an arrangement for having you decide while you are at your most hopeful and least informed, and for making the refusal fall due on a day you will have forgotten. The yearly rate deserves the same mark for the same reason, since what it buys for its ten per cent off is a whole year in which the question cannot come up. Pay by the year only for the tools that have already survived the question twice.

Also in the archive: The Fortnight in Pencil, The Rent Already Paid and The Six Channels.