The Fortnight in Pencil

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Not the old town this time but a town of your own century, where two picture framers bought the same machine, and the one who left most of it switched off got the use of it.

Two picture framers in one town, the same mount board and glass, the same system bought in January.
Both took enquiries by telephone and website form, and answered every one.
Both meant it to carry the dull part of the day, the writing out and remembering.
One switched on all it offered, the first morning, before a single job.
One kept a ruled book in pencil for a fortnight, and switched on four in March.
Why did the second man's machine save him two days a month, while the first man's cost him work he never knew he lost?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two picture framers, in a town I have never named and a century I have never seen. A long bench, the sweetish smell of glue, grey dust from the mount cutter. Both were good, and either could match a hundred-year-old gilt frame closely enough that no family asked twice. Enquiries came all day and half the night: the telephone, the website form, a woman in the doorway with a watercolour under her arm.

In January each bought the same thing: a program that sits on a screen and does your letter writing and remembering for you. It acknowledges an enquiry the moment it arrives, sends a quote on a form of words you give it once, then chases, reminds, thanks, and comes back six months later to ask after you.

The first framer switched on all of it that first morning, before one job had passed through his hands. The acknowledgement promised a quote within one working day, true in a quiet week and a lie in a busy one. The quote form asked for sizes and never for what the picture was for or where it would hang, the question that had always decided both job and price. A woman who collected four watercolours on the Tuesday had a note on the Friday urging her not to delay. The ruinous part was none of that, but that he could no longer see his own steps, so when work thinned in the spring he had nothing to look at and nothing to change. He decided the market had gone quiet.

The second framer bought the same thing and did not switch it on. He put a ruled book by the telephone and for a fortnight wrote down every enquiry as it came: how it reached him, what was asked, what he sent back, the minutes taken, what became of it. Thirty-one enquiries in fourteen days, in pencil.

The book told him things he would have sworn were otherwise. He had always said that writing quotes ate his week. The book put the whole of it at an hour and a half in fourteen days. What truly cost him was going back nine separate times to ask something forgotten at the start, twice losing the job in the week it took to get an answer. Eleven of the thirty-one had asked the same three questions in almost the same order.

So in March he switched on four things. An acknowledgement in his own words, saying he reads these himself and answers on his next workshop day, which he could keep. A form carrying those three questions, so nothing need be asked twice. One reminder, the day before collection. A weekly note of anything unanswered. The rest stayed off, not from suspicion of machines but because the fortnight had given him no reason to turn it on. The six-month letter he left until the autumn, by which time he knew what interval meant anything in his trade.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A machine does not improve a process, it repeats one, so the only parts of your work worth handing to it are the parts you have already done by hand often enough to be bored by them. The boredom is the qualification: it means the step has stopped varying.

Consider what you are hiring: a lad to mind the shop who does exactly as he is told, at speed, for ever, and never looks up to notice that today is different. A fine servant for a step that is the same every time, a dangerous one for a step that is not, and which of yours are which is not settled by thinking at a desk.

The handwork pays twice. It finds the expensive step, which is almost never the one the owner complains of: mechanising the quote writing would have saved ninety minutes a fortnight and left nine wasted journeys standing. And it becomes the written instruction that makes a step one somebody other than you can carry out. If you cannot write a step out plainly, no machine can perform it, and what you get is something adjacent to it, performed faithfully.

The common counsel runs the other way: switch it all on and let the system's records teach you, since they measure more than a pencil can. That is mistaken, though not because machines are. A system reports what it did, never what the customer wanted and was not asked, and a cooled enquiry makes no complaint. A mistake by hand costs one customer and you watch it happen; mechanised, it costs every customer after until somebody is kind enough to mention it.

Two cautions. First, a fortnight is a fortnight and not a way of life. The trader still in pencil three years on is busy rather than careful, and has made a job out of his own caution. Name the date you will decide, and decide on it. Second, mechanise the carriage of your judgement, not the judgement. The remembering, sending, filing and chasing: give that away gladly. But when a machine chooses what to say rather than when, you have handed over the only thing that was ever yours.

Three questions, and the first takes a fortnight of small interruptions:

1. Where does the time actually go? Keep a ruled book by the telephone for your next twenty enquiries: how it came, what was asked, what you sent, minutes taken, what happened. Then read it: it will not resemble what you would have told me beforehand.
2. Could a stranger do this step from your written instruction alone? Write it out plainly on half a page. If you cannot, it is still judgement, and not ready to hand over.
3. What is switched on that you have never read? Read every automatic message your system sends, in order, as a customer would. Any you would not have signed with your own name, switch off this afternoon.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did the second man's machine save him two days a month and the first man's cost him work he never knew he lost? Because the first gave a faithful servant instructions he had never written, and they were carried out perfectly, at speed, on every customer, out of his sight. The second spent a fortnight in pencil, found which steps had stopped varying, and handed over those alone. Same machine, same money, the whole difference made before either switched it on.

The verse:

One man turned the whole thing on and let it mind his trade,
One man kept a ruled book first and watched how work was made.
The first was answered day and night by words he never wrote,
The second gave away the dull, and kept his hand and note.

Until next time. Go and read, word for word, every automatic message your system sends a customer, and switch off today the ones you would not have signed.

P.S. Keep the ruled book afterwards. When work goes thin a year from now it is the only honest picture you will own of a fortnight when things worked, and a man with such a record need not guess at what he has altered since. The machine keeps no memory of how you did it by hand. It was never asked to.

Also in the archive: The 9:47pm Enquiry, Settled in February and The Chandler's Two Jars.