The Figure He Named Standing Up

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town the dearest words a tradesman ever spoke were the ones he said to be obliging, with his rule still in his pocket.

Two plasterers in the town I have never named, the same lime and the same hair.
Both were asked, in the same damp parlour, roughly what it might come to.
One was obliging and said about seven pounds.
One said he could not tell her yet, and told her when he could.
Both of them finished at eleven pounds odd, and both were honest men.
Same trade, same wall, the same final figure. Why did one of them lose it?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is plastering. Lime slaked and left to fatten in a pit, ox hair beaten in for the coarse stuff, laths nailed with a finger's gap so the first coat hangs on behind. Both men had served their time, and neither was cheaper by a shilling a yard.

The parlour belonged to a householder on the north side, and it was in a sorry way. Damp had come through from a blocked gutter, the paper hung off in sheets, and a bulge in the ceiling gave under a thumb. She wanted it done before Whitsun.

She asked both men the same question, in the first five minutes, standing up, before either had the dust sheets out of the barrow. Roughly what would a job like this come to.

The first plasterer looked round the room. He had done a hundred parlours. He said about seven pounds, give or take, and he said it kindly, because he did not care to seem a man who would not give a straight answer.

Then he did the work of finding out. A bar through a corner of the ceiling showed what two winters of damp had been doing. The laths were sodden and half of them sprung. The ceiling wanted taking down entire, lathing afresh and three coats. His worked figure, with the carting away, was eleven pounds and a little over.

He had now a choice between two unpleasant letters, and he wrote the kinder one. He came down to eight pounds fifteen, a figure reached by arithmetic done on his own livelihood rather than on the wall. She had been told seven, and eight fifteen set against seven was a man who had thought better of his generosity. He did the job, lost two pounds on it, and heard nothing from the north side again.

The second plasterer named no figure. He would not guess at a ceiling with a bulge in it, he said, because the guess would be wrong one way or the other. What he could tell her was this. The last parlour of that size he had finished came to nine pounds twelve, walls and ceiling and two coats of distemper, with a sound ceiling he had not had to touch. He took on no room of that size under six pounds. And he would have her figure by Friday, once he had a bar through that corner.

He opened the ceiling on the Wednesday and found what the other man found. His figure went out on the Friday. Eleven pounds five, with the condemned ceiling named as the reason her job stood above the spring one. She took it without an argument. The only figure in her head was nine pounds twelve for an easier room, and eleven five had a reason fastened to it.

Mark it closely. The same wall, the same rot, the same eleven pounds of work. One man was paid for it and one was not, and the difference was settled in the first five minutes.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A figure you say out loud before you have worked it out becomes your price, and every true number that follows it can only arrive as an apology. He did not give her an estimate. He gave her the yardstick she would measure his estimate against.

Whatever number reaches a customer first becomes the one all later numbers are judged by, and it keeps that office after it has been withdrawn. Seven had become the natural price of her parlour, and his honest figure had to reach her as a rise.

Notice that the rough figure can only move against you. If the true cost comes out beneath it you have handed over the difference, since you will not now ask less than you said. If it comes out above, as it generally does, you must either eat the shortfall or go back and ask for more. A number you have not worked is a bet placed where the winnings go to the other party and the losses stay with you.

Understand too why the obliging answer feels obligatory. The question is friendly, the kitchen is warm, and refusing it feels both rude and like the beginning of a price kept deliberately out of sight. So the awkwardness is not avoided but postponed to the day you must contradict yourself, where it costs you the margin and the job together.

Have an answer ready, then, before you next stand in anybody's parlour, and let it have three parts. First, a finished fact: the last job of that shape you completed, what it actually came to, and what was in it. That is history rather than a promise, and it does the work of a figure without being one. Second, a floor: the sum below which you do not take on this kind of room. A floor is the only number safe to say standing up, because it can move in no direction but your favour. Third, a date, and the opening up you must do before it.

Do not split the difference by offering a span instead, seven to eleven pounds. She will hear seven. The span is the rough figure over again, and we dealt with it where prices are given as a range.

Two cautions. Silence is not the lesson. A tradesman who will say nothing whatever about money sounds like a man whose price depends on what he thinks you can pay. And your floor must be true. Name six pounds as your lowest and then do a parlour for five because the week was thin, and you have taught that household, and everyone they talk to, that your numbers move under pressure.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What did my last three finished jobs of each common sort come to? Not the estimate, the final invoice. Write them on a card and carry it.
2. What came out of my mouth the last time somebody asked me roughly what? Go and find what that job finally cost, and see which way the gap ran.
3. What is my honest floor for the three jobs I am asked about most? And did I go under it last month, and why.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same wall, the same final figure. Why did one of them lose it?

Because he had told her what the job was worth before he knew, and she believed him. His eleven pounds was correct and arrived as a retreat from his own seven. The other man's eleven pounds was the first figure he had ever given her, standing beside a finished job at nine pounds twelve. One man priced the parlour. The other priced his own good manners.

The verse:

The figure you give to be pleasant
Is the figure they hold to for good,
For a number let slip in a doorway
Outlives every number since stood.

Until next time. Go and write on one card what your last three finished jobs came to, and keep it with your rule.

P.S. There is one case where the number must be said at once. Where the customer buys a thing of fixed shape, the same every time, having no price to hand is not caution but disorganisation, and the figure belongs on the wall and in the first sentence.

Also in the archive: The Good Iron on the Axle, The Figure He Did Not Tidy and The Estimate in the Drawer.