The Ladder in January

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, where two house painters had the same two ladders, the same three good months and the same three empty ones, and only one of them wrote a figure against the empty ones.

Two house painters in one town, the same white lead, the same brushes, the same men on the ladders.
Both were turning work away in July and both were sitting at home in January.
One asked the same figure for the same room in every week of the year.
One asked more in July than he asked in January, and said so in print, in October.
Neither worked a longer day, and neither had the better name in the town.
Why did the second man end the year with seven houses the first man never had?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two house painters and grainers in the town I've never named. White lead ground in linseed, a jar of turpentine, bladders of colour on a shelf, a graining comb each and ladders long enough for the villas on the hill. Two men apiece and a boy to carry. Both were good, and both had the year that every painter has: a June, July and August in which they could not get round to everybody, and a December, January and February in which nobody wanted them at all.

The first man had one price and was proud of it. The outside of a villa, eleven pounds. A six-roomed house done inside, four pounds ten. The same figure to the parson as to the brewer, the same in August as in February, and he would tell you so before you had asked. In the first fortnight of July he turned away five jobs, two of which went elsewhere and never came back. In the second week of February he painted his own kitchen for the second time that winter and let one of his men go until the thaw.

The second man had the same arithmetic in front of him and did something else with it. In October he sat down with his book and counted weeks rather than jobs. Eleven weeks of the year had nothing in them. Six weeks held work he had refused. He had been pricing a room all his life and had never once priced a week.

So he had a small notice printed, left a dozen with the ironmonger and sent one to every house he had painted in nine years. Outside work, April to September, eleven pounds for a villa as before, and he would hold it. Inside work, booked for January or February, three pounds fifteen for the six rooms, with the reason set down in a line underneath: his men are paid through the winter whether the ladders go out or not, and he would sooner have them working at the lower figure than idle at none. It named the two months and nothing else, and it neither apologised nor pleaded.

The householders who had been meaning for three years to have the dining room done chose January, since January suited the purse, the room was dull anyway at that season and the garden wanted nothing doing. Seven houses in that first winter, and the eleven empty weeks came down to four. One woman who would never have had him in at four pound ten had him in for the dining room in February, and had the outside done in the June following at the whole eleven pounds, because by then he was not a painter but her painter.

Be fair to the first man. One price all year is honest, simple to say, easy to defend, and a man who holds it is never once suspected of charging what the traffic will bear. He had settled his price against the work, which is the proper place to begin, and then never looked at the only other thing a price must answer to, which is the week it arrives in.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Price the week as well as the work, because one figure held all year is a figure chosen for an average week, and you do not have average weeks. You have weeks you cannot serve and weeks you cannot fill, and a single price serves the first badly and the second not at all.

The reason is in your costs, though not where you look for them. Paint and wages and the hire of a cart are much the same in February as in July, and if cost were the whole of it then one price would be right. But the true price of taking a job in July is the job you must refuse in order to take it, and the true price of taking one in February is nothing at all, since the alternative is a man painting his own kitchen twice. The same work in two different weeks costs you two quite different things, and a price that cannot tell those weeks apart has not been given the information to be right.

The customer's side of it is plainer still. A lower figure for the quiet weeks is not read as a weakness, it is read as a reward for being easy to serve, and a great many people are delighted to be easy to serve if anybody will tell them what it is worth. The man who must have the work in July is not being punished either. He is buying your July, which is genuinely scarce, and he knows it before he asks. Nobody is tricked, because the whole of it was written down in October.

There is a sorting that goes on besides. The customer who buys chiefly on price moves himself, cheerfully and unprompted, into the weeks where you had nobody, and your full weeks are left to those paying the full figure. It cures the two bad habits of the trade as well: turning work away in summer without ever charging for the privilege, and dropping your price in February out of fright with no reason attached, which is a discount nobody has been given a reason for and will be remembered against you in June.

Two cautions. First, publish the quiet-week figure and its dates before you need the money, in writing, where everybody sees the same thing. A winter price announced in October is a plan, and the same figure murmured on a doorstep in February is a collapse. The one fills your January, the other teaches the town that your price was soft all along and can be made soft again by waiting. Second, put the gap on the side of the reward and never on the side of necessity. Let the quiet weeks be cheaper rather than letting the desperate week be dearer, for a man charged extra because his pipe has burst and he cannot wait until Thursday pays it once and tells it as a grievance for years, which is a price remembered as an injury. If your standing figure is too low, raise the standing figure and say why.

Three questions, and the first wants doing tonight with last year's book open:

1. Which weeks were empty and which were full? Go through the twelvemonth and mark every week in which you turned work away, and every week in which you had none. Most trades find it is the same four or five weeks every year, never written down, because nobody counts weeks, only jobs.
2. What work fits a quiet week? There is usually a version of what you do with no urgency in it, which can be done at the customer's convenience rather than his emergency. The inside job rather than the outside one, the servicing rather than the breakdown. That is what the quiet-week price is for, and not your whole trade at a shilling off.
3. What one sentence will you publish, and where? Name the months, name the figure, give the reason in a line, and put it where your customers already look. If you cannot write it in one sentence you have not decided it, and an undecided price is the one that gets argued over on a doorstep.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did the second man end the year with seven houses the first man never had?

Because he had two prices for the same brush, and the second of them was addressed to the weeks rather than to the work. The first man's four pounds ten was a fair figure for a room and a useless figure for a January, and so his January stayed empty, at a price nobody had refused and nobody had been offered.

The verse:

One priced the room and one priced the week it would be painted in,
The same white lead, the same ladders, the same two men and a boy.
July was full for both of them and only one filled January,
For a price that cannot read a calendar is half a price at best.

Until next time. Go and open last year's book and mark the weeks you had nothing in, before you decide another figure.

P.S. The same counting works on a smaller scale than a season. A shop has a Tuesday morning that is never full and a Saturday it cannot move in. If a whole quiet month is more than you can face naming a figure for, name a quiet morning instead and see who comes. The quiet-week price is also the cheapest advertising you will ever buy, since it brings in somebody who would not have come at all, and he comes back in a full week at the full figure, having forgotten entirely what he first paid.

Also in the archive: The Quiet Month, Booked Until March and Half a Crown Each Monday.