Never the Finest Black

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two dyers drew from the same river, and the better man lost the trade.

Two dyers, the same river water, the same logwood and the same copperas,
The same vats, the same fires, the same drying ground behind the shed.
One man's black, on a good day, was the finest black in the county.
One man's black was never the finest, and was the same black every time.
The town praised the first and sent its cloth to the second.
Which black did they prefer, and why did the better dyer lose the work?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two dyers in the town I've never named, taking in cloth from the same three parishes. Coats to be made over, a length of stuff for a gown, a bolt now and then from the draper. Both had vats behind the house, both carried the sour reek of the copperas in their clothes, and both hung their work in the same wind.

The first dyer was the better craftsman and everybody said so, including the second. He worked by eye and nose and by the way the liquor ran off a stick, and when it came right there was nothing like it. A black with a depth in the fold of it, so that a woman putting on a made-over coat felt she had bought something rather than saved something. Three lengths in four came back like that. The fourth came out with a greenish cast that showed only in daylight, or gone brown along the selvedge, and he would take it back, apologise like a gentleman, and do it again for nothing.

The second dyer was not as good, and said so himself. What he had was a ruled book. The weight of the cloth, the weight of the logwood, the hours in the vat, the depth of the liquor marked on a notched stick, and pinned to each page a thumb's width of what came out. His black was honest, deep enough for anybody, and never once the finest black in the county. It was, however, the same black in December that it had been in March.

The dressmaker at the end of the lane worked it out first. She could cut sleeves in one month from cloth dyed in another and have them match the body, and could promise a customer a date without a private prayer attached to it. So she sent everything to the second man, and when a householder wanted a coat dyed to sit beside trousers done the year before, she told him where to go. Within two years the draper had moved his bolts across as well, so that he could sell from a pattern card and know what would arrive.

Be fair to the first man. He was neither careless nor idle. He gave back more free work than his rival ever did, and every customer he disappointed was made whole. He believed that a tradesman is judged on his best work. So he is, by other tradesmen.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A customer does not buy your best work. He buys the work he can count on getting. You see a year of your output in a heap, and form your opinion of yourself from the top of it. Your customer sees one length of cloth. He is not choosing between your best and another man's best. He is weighing what will probably turn up against the trouble of finding out, and insuring himself against your worst week.

This is why the free remedy never buys back what the fault cost. A length done again at your expense settles the money and leaves the information standing, and the information is that you are a gamble. The customer files it, says nothing, and next time gives the work to somebody duller.

There is a second effect, and it is the one that builds a business. A man whose work is even can be planned around. The dressmaker did not send her cloth to the second dyer out of loyalty. She sent it because he had made himself a fixed point that other people's arrangements could be built on, which is a larger thing than being liked. Get yourself built into the way your customers do their own work and you are no longer competing for each job. It is the mechanism behind my letter on the date you name and the date you keep.

Unevenness is nearly invisible from where you stand and glaring from where they stand. You know the reason for the bad fortnight. The apprentice was new, the weather turned, the order came in at a rush. None of those reasons is available to the householder, who has a coat that does not match and no way of knowing whether that is who you are or merely how it went. He judges on the evidence in his hands, which is the argument of my letter on the evidence a customer actually has.

Two cautions. First, evenness is no excuse for mediocrity, and I am not telling you to stop trying. The work is to raise the floor rather than the ceiling. Find what you do on a poor week, make that the standard, then lift the standard deliberately, so that every customer is moved up together rather than some of them getting the good version by luck. Second, a few trades really are paid for the peak. The portrait, the speech, the commission of a lifetime. Almost nothing bought twice is bought that way.

Three questions, and the second is the one that does the work:

1. What does your customer get on your worst week? Not the average week. The week with the illness in it, or the rush. Describe it plainly, because that is what your trade is actually selling, and everything above it is a bonus nobody relies on.
2. What in your work is done by eye, and could be done by a rule? The notched stick, the weighed measure, the written order of operations. Judgement is wonderful, and it has bad mornings and goes home at five. Anything you move into a rule stops varying.
3. If a customer came back in six months for the same thing, would they get the same thing? Test it honestly. If the answer depends on who is on that day, it will show up in every second order.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which black did they prefer, and why did the better dyer lose the work?

They preferred the second, which was plainly not the better black. They preferred it because a person buying a dyed length is rarely judging a colour. She is judging a match, against a sleeve, against last year's coat, against a promise she has already made to a customer of her own. The first dyer offered a chance of something admirable and a chance of explaining yourself to a woman in a fitting. The second offered no chance in either direction, and where work is used rather than admired, that is the thing worth paying for.

The verse:

One dyer chased the finest black, and caught it three weeks in four,
One dyer kept a notched stick, and caught the same black always.
The first was praised on market day by men who sent him nothing,
The second matched a length in March to one dyed in December.

Until next time. Go and find the one part of your work that comes out differently depending on the week, or on who does it, and write down the rule that would make it the same.

P.S. You will never receive this complaint. Nobody writes to say your work is uneven, because unevenness is not a fault a customer can point at. He has one instance and a suspicion he cannot prove, and the polite thing to do with a suspicion is to take your custom quietly elsewhere. The trades that hear of it are the ones that go and ask what the last job was like, in those words, and then sit still while the answer comes.

Also in the archive: The Last Twenty Minutes, The Yellow Wheels and The Clockmender's Price.