The Drawer That Would Not Shut

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were trades whose customer had to show you something before you could be any use to him, and the state of that something was often the reason you were never sent for.

Two book-keepers in the town I have never named, the same ink and the same ledgers.
Both charged four shillings a day, and both were worth it.
Both put two hundred handbills through the same doors in the January.
One said he was accurate, prompt and moderate in his terms.
One said he had once begun with three years unentered and a boot box of bills.
Same trade, same price, same doors. Why did one of them fill his winter?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is book-keeping. A ruled ledger, a steel pen, the day book copied over on a Friday evening, every column added twice and the second time from the bottom upward, because a man who adds downward twice makes the same mistake twice. Both worked for the small traders of the town.

The first book-keeper had his handbill printed in a good plain face. Accounts kept and books balanced. Accuracy, dispatch, moderate terms. Twenty-two years in the trade. Every word true, and he wrote the finest hand in the town. He got work, too. The draper, whose books were in fair order and who wanted them in better. A brewer's agent keeping two sets of figures that nearly agreed. Good customers, every one already looking for a book-keeper when the handbill came. By the March he was quoting against the other three book-keepers for the same tidy desks, and what they discussed was the rate.

The second book-keeper used the same printer and spent the same four shillings. The top of his bill said accounts kept and books balanced, in nearly the same words, there being only one way to say it. Then it said this. I have begun with a set of books three years unentered, the bills in a boot box and the bank letters unopened, and had them straight by the quarter day. Nothing in your drawer is new to me. Nothing I find in it is spoken of outside your door. You need not put anything in order before I come.

He had four replies in the first week, none from a man who had ever answered an advertisement.

The corn chandler was first. His top drawer had not shut properly for two years, the drawer being where things went when he did not know what to do with them. He stood in his kitchen, hat in hands, while the boot box was fetched, and apologised twice before the lid came off. He supposed this was the worst the book-keeper had seen. The book-keeper said you should see some of them, and asked for a candle and the table until nine.

Then the saddler, who had been meaning to get somebody in for four years, and a lodging-house keeper with three rent books, none of them wrong and none the same.

Mark what happened there. The second man undercut nobody, and his hand was the worse of the two. He took work slower and dirtier than the draper's neat ledgers, charged a shilling a day more by the summer, and nobody argued with it. He had not found more customers. He had found the ones already in the town, wanting him and not writing to him.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The customer who never answers you is frequently not weighing your price nor doubting your skill, but dreading the moment he must show you the state of the thing. He is not comparing you with your rival. He is weighing the discomfort of being seen against the ease of putting it off another year, and the year is winning.

Every trade has this tariff, and it appears on no price list. The flue not swept in nine years. The garden that got away from its owner two summers ago. The accounts, the roof, the room nobody opens. The work itself is ordinary. The showing is not, and it is the showing that stops the enquiry being made.

Understand why you never hear of it. A man who thinks your price too high will say so, and you can answer him. A man ashamed of his drawer says nothing, because telling you is the thing he is avoiding. So the demand is invisible from your side of the door and looks like no demand at all, which is a different thing entirely. Your rival is not the other book-keeper. It is another twelve months of the drawer not shutting.

Now the part most people get wrong. Reassurance in general terms will not do it. Friendly, approachable, no job too small. He does not disbelieve you, but he believes you have not seen his case, and his case is the only one he is thinking of. What moves him is the worst you have actually handled, said in figures. Three years unentered. Nine years of soot. Forty feet of bramble and a gate nobody has opened since the jubilee. A figure cannot be warm or sincere, only true, which is why an exact one is believed where an assurance is quietly discounted. And the question he has is not are you any good. It is am I the worst you have seen, and the answer he needs is no. The same line tells the town that what you find in a drawer stays in the drawer, which he was wondering about rather more than your daily rate.

Two cautions. Name only what you have really done, and be ready for it to walk in on Monday. Say three years unentered and a man will bring you three years unentered, and if you cannot put it straight you have bought a worse name than silence ever cost. And name it once, plainly, without relish. A trade that advertises the squalor it rescues insults the people it wants, and they can hear it. You tell him his drawer is ordinary, then say nothing further of it.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What must my customer show me before I can start? The books, the room, the machine. Somebody is not sending for you because of the state of it.
2. What is the worst I have put right, stated in numbers? Not the hardest job, the most neglected one. The years, the feet, the boxes. You have never written it down.
3. What must a customer do before I arrive? Tidy, measure, apologise, be at home all day. Each is a reason to wait for a better week, and most you can take away in a line.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same price, same doors. Why did one of them fill his winter?

Because the first bill answered a question nobody was asking. Nobody doubted that a book-keeper could keep books. The second answered the question keeping men awake, which was whether a stranger might be let in to see the state of things, and whether he would talk afterwards. The first wrote to the people already looking for him. The second wrote to those avoiding him, and there were more of those.

The verse:

He did not hold back for the price of the day,
Nor doubt you were able and sound,
He sat with a drawer that would not quite shut
And dreaded the day you came round.

Until next time. Go and write the sentence that names, in figures, the worst neglect you have ever put right, and put it where a stranger reads you first.

P.S. The same sentence does its best work on the telephone, where you will know the moment by the apology that comes before the question. I am afraid it is in rather a state. Whoever says that has decided to spend the money and is only asking to be excused. Answer that nothing needs tidying before you come, and the work is yours before the price is named.

Also in the archive: The Notice at the Orchard Gate, Everyone Does It, Nobody Says It and Set Aside at Nine in the Evening.