One Man to Ask

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, the rain came in at the back of a house in October, and putting it right wanted three trades, two of them strangers to the householder.

Two joiners in the town I have never named, the same bench and the same seasoned deal.
Both were asked in the same week to see to a scullery where the wet was coming through.
Both saw that the lead wanted a plumber before them and the ceiling a plasterer after.
One put his work at nine pounds and told the householder, truly, that she would need two other men.
One put his work at nine pounds and wrote beneath it the day each of the other two would come.
Same deal, same nine pounds, same trade to the inch. Which of them was given the whole of it?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Both men worked alone, and either would have done the carpentry well. The scullery stood at the back of a house in a row of six: a length of lead gutter split at the corner, the water under the boarding, two rafter ends gone soft, and the ceiling down in a patch the size of a tea tray. The householder put a pail under it and got used to the pail, which is how most work arrives.

The first joiner came on the Monday and spent an honest half hour in the roof. Two rafter ends to splice, the boarding renewed, a new frame to the door. Nine pounds. Then he said the thing that was both true and the end of him: the lead was a plumber's business and he would not touch it, the ceiling was a plasterer's, and she would want to get those men in herself, one before him and one after. He said it kindly, having been blamed once for another man's bad joint and having resolved never to put his name near another trade.

So she was left with an estimate and three men to find, in an order she had heard once at the foot of a ladder. The plumber came a fortnight late and went away again for lead. By then the joiner had a month at the brewery, because a man who is clear in October is not clear in November, and when the boarding was done the plasterer was at a chapel job until the new year. The pail stayed until February. She paid all three in full. Not one of them had done poor work. The work had simply been nobody's.

The second joiner came on the Tuesday, saw the same roof, and arrived at the same figure to the shilling. Then he sat on the step with his book and wrote four more lines. A plumber he had worked beside for nine years would come on the Monday and run the new lead. He would be there himself the Tuesday and Wednesday, since boarding over a split gutter is money buried. The plasterer would come the Monday following, when the boards had dried. Each man would send his own bill in his own name. And for seeing that the three came in that order, and telling her the same day if one did not, he added fifteen shillings to his account, written as a line of its own.

She took him, at nine pounds fifteen, over a man of equal skill at nine pounds, and the work was finished in eleven days. When a neighbour later asked her who to get, she had one name to give instead of three.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your customer is not buying your trade, he is buying the end of his trouble, and the part he dreads is not your work but the arranging of everybody else's. You price your hours and your material and compare your figure with the next man's, while the thing standing between him and the yes is a difficulty you never quoted for and he cannot name.

Consider what you ask of her when you say she will want two other men. To learn the right order of three trades she has never engaged. To carry the gap between each of them, which is where jobs of this kind die. And to be the one person with nobody to send for when it goes wrong, since each man can truthfully blame the trade either side of him. She will not argue. She will find it easier to do nothing, or to take the man who did not hand it to her. I have written before on selling the week your customer must live through; the week she dreads is the one in which she is the foreman.

Notice too what the fifteen shillings did, beyond earning fifteen shillings. It made an invisible labour visible and gave it a price, so that she could see what she bought. Trades do this work constantly and charge for none of it, which is why they resent it and do it badly. Written on the paper it stops being good nature and becomes a service. That is selling the job rather than the item, applied to the part that is not yours.

Two cautions. The first is that arranging is not warranting, and you must say which you offer. To name the day a man will come, send for him, and tell the customer the same hour he fails is one thing, and fifteen shillings buys it. To put his work on your own bill and stand behind it is another trade altogether, with his bad morning on your account. The second is that you may only hand over a name you have earned the right to hand over: a man whose work you have seen, and who will tell you straight when he cannot come.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which of the jobs I quoted this year could not be finished without another trade? Mark every estimate since the spring where your part was a piece of a larger thing. On those you competed on price while your customer worried about something else.
2. Whose work have I seen with my own eyes, and does he know I would put my name beside it? One name in each of the trades either side of yours changes every estimate you write. Tell them so this week, and tell them what you expect: that they come, or say early that they cannot.
3. What did the arranging cost me in hours on the last job of this kind, and on which line did it appear? If the answers are four hours and nowhere, you are in this business already and giving it away.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same deal, same nine pounds, same trade to the inch. Which of them was given the whole of it?

The second man, at nine pounds fifteen, and the extra fifteen shillings is the part worth looking at. He was not the cheaper man. He had seen that the householder had two troubles in that scullery, and that his rival had solved one and handed back the other.

The verse:

The rafter and the lead and the plaster overhead,
Three trades and three accounts, and a pail upon the floor.
She never wanted trades, she wanted it to end instead,
So name the days they come, and she need ask but one man more.

Until next time. Go and take the last estimate you sent for a job that needed somebody else, and write two lines under your figure: who the other man is, and the day he comes.

P.S. There is a second return on this, slower and larger. A plumber handed three clean mornings by a man with honest dates and no haggling keeps that man's name in his head, and is asked for names constantly. Those trades see more of your market in a week than your advertising reaches in a month. You buy their good word not by being pleasant to them but by bringing them work with the thinking already done.

Also in the archive: Twice Up the Same Ladder, The Gap the Cattle Used and The Ledger That Would Not Lie Flat.