Settled in February

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two brickmakers dug the same seam of clay, and both opened their season in the same week of April.

Two brickmakers, the same field, the same moulds and the same clamp,
The same ten thousand green bricks drying under straw in the same May sun.
One settled every question as it came, fairly, on its merits, at the gate.
One had settled them all in February, on a sheet nailed inside his door.
Both worked the same hours, and the second man was held to be the rigid one.
Why was it the rigid one who went home at six and finished his season ahead?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two brickmakers in the town I've never named, their fields a mile apart on the same clay. The work was the work: the pug mill turning, sand thrown into the stock mould, the lump struck off level with a wire, the green brick laid on the hacks under straw against the rain, and in September a clamp left to burn a fortnight. Both made a sound brick at the same cost.

A brickmaking season asks the same handful of questions over and over. A gentleman wants three hundred for a garden wall, and setting up for three hundred costs nearly what three thousand costs. A builder wants his bricks now and his bill at Michaelmas. A customer agrees the price and then, hand already out, asks what can be done about it.

The first brickmaker met each as it came, which he thought the only honest way. Every case was different, he said, so he weighed each at the gate with a cart waiting. He was not weak and refused plenty. But he decided at eleven in the morning with his hands full, so the small orders went in among the large, the credit was given because the builder was good for it, probably, and the shilling came off because a shilling is a small thing to lose a load over. By August he was firing clamps two thirds built to keep three promises he could no longer recall the reasons for.

The second brickmaker did his deciding in February, when the field was iron and there was nothing to be done outdoors. He sat with the previous year's book and a pen, and by evening he had one sheet, nailed inside the office door. It named the smallest order he would set the moulds for, and the one day a fortnight on which small orders went out together. It named what was wanted down before the clay was touched. Credit ran to Michaelmas for any man not late twice and to nobody else. It gave the number of bricks below which no clamp was fired, and it said what the handshake question would be answered with.

Then he did not decide anything for eight months. He read. The sheet had been written by a calm man in winter looking at a whole year, who is a different person from a tired man in August looking at one cart. His lad could recite the lot by May and answer the gate himself. He was thought rigid and did not mind.

Be fair to the first man. His flexibility won him two or three loads the other never saw, including a June order that became a terrace. A rule does cost you the exception. But he paid for those loads with his season, and nobody sends you a bill for a morning.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Any question you answer more than three times should be answered once, in writing, and then never again. The ordinary recurring questions of a trade are not occasions for judgement. They want a rule, written in advance by the version of you that sees the whole year rather than the one customer.

The first reason this works is that where you decide changes what you weigh. At the gate, the cost of no is in front of you with a face on it, while the cost of yes is spread thin across weeks you cannot see from there. In February both are the same size on the same page, because you are looking at a book instead of a man. The decision is not harder in winter, only measured correctly.

The second is that a rule can be said aloud without insult. A sheet saying the moulds are not set under five hundred states a fact, and is heard as one. The same refusal invented on the spot is heard as a judgement about the man, made in his presence and for him alone. The rule is kinder as well as quicker, and a lad of fifteen can repeat it, which no act of judgement ever can.

The third is that consistency ends the testing. A man who yields sometimes is asked every time, deservedly, since asking pays. A man whose edge sits in the same place is asked once and left to get on with it. Half the wearing conversations of a trade are people finding out whether this is the week you give way, and each spends a ration of judgement that is fixed by the day. That is the trouble behind the question asked at the handshake.

Two cautions. First, a rule outlives its reason, and left on the door it hardens into superstition, which is how the thrift that saves a young trade begins to cost an older one, as in the habits of the hungry year. Put the date on the sheet and keep an afternoon a year for writing it again. Second, rules are for the ordinary and recurring, never the rare and large. A new line of work, a customer three times your size, a bad year: those want the thinking you saved at the gate. And write few, from your own book: a sheet is a tool, a folder is a bureaucracy.

Three questions, and an afternoon with last year's book answers them:

1. Which question did you answer more than three times last month? Go through it by memory and by your messages. Anything on that list is a rule waiting to be written, and until it is you will answer it again next month, slightly differently, at a worse moment.
2. Which of your yeses do you regret, and what had they in common? Line up last year's bad jobs and look for the shape rather than the story. It is nearly always the same: too small, too far, too rushed, too vague, or a man late before. That shape, written as one sentence, beats any amount of resolving to be firmer.
3. Could somebody minding your gate answer it without sending for you? Say it aloud and see whether a sensible lad could apply it. If it needs your judgement, your mood or your presence, it is not a rule but a preference, and preferences bend in the afternoon.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was it the rigid one who went home at six and finished his season ahead?

Because he had done his deciding in February, once, in the cold, with the whole year before him on one page. The other did the same deciding ninety times over, at the gate, with a cart waiting and a man's face in the way of the arithmetic. He was not the stricter man. He was simply not doing the work twice.

The verse:

One met each caller with an open mind and lost the morning to it,
One had settled in the frost what all the summer meant to ask.
The clay was the same clay and the moulds the same moulds,
But one of them decided once, and one of them decided always.

Until next time. Go and write down the three questions you answered most often this month, with your answer to each, and pin the sheet where you work.

P.S. The first rule to write is the one governing you when you are behind: the hour at which you stop, and what gets dropped when the day will not hold everything. Everybody has that rule already, remade each evening at eight by the most tired man in the business, and never written down.

Also in the archive: The Price of an Hour, Sheets in Four Hallways and The Round He Would Not Widen.