The Last Thing the Room Heard

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a piano went out of tune twice a year, and the man who put it right was a man nobody in the house could judge.

Two tuners in one town, the same forks and the same roll of felt.
Both could bring a tired square piano back to true inside two hours.
Both charged five shillings, and both came on the day they said.
One of them left the room in silence, with his bag buckled.
The other left it with the instrument sounding, and asked for nothing.
Within three years one of them was tuning twice the pianos. Which, and why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two piano tuners, in the town I have never named. Both served their time with the same firm in the city, and both knew within four notes what the winter damp in a parlour had been doing.

Consider what the householder could tell. She could hear that the thing was sour in October and sweet again when the man had gone. Everything between was hidden. Whether the unisons were clean she could no more judge than the shoeing of a horse. She paid five shillings for work she could not inspect.

The first tuner was the better workman of the two, and I want that said plainly. When the tuning was done he did not stop. The lowest octave was a wreck, three strings dead and the whole of it muddy, and nobody in the house had played a note down there in years. He gave it his last twelve minutes anyway, because it was wrong and he could not leave a thing wrong. Then he rolled his felts, closed the lid, squared the stool, took his money and went. The last thing the room heard was the catch of his bag.

The second tuner stopped earlier. The bottom octave he left near enough, knowing it was near enough and not right, which cost him something in his own mind. Then he sat down on the stool and played.

Not a performance. Eight bars of a hymn the household sang on Sundays, slowly, with the lid up, then a run from the bottom of the keyboard to the top and back, so the whole thing spoke in one piece. The daughter came in from the passage and stood in the doorway. He said one sentence, that it would hold until the frosts and would want him again after, and then took his five shillings and went.

Both tuned about the same number of pianos that first year, for the same money. By the third year the second man had the better part of the parish.

Not because he tuned better. Because the first man left his householder nothing she could say at a dinner table. He tuned it very well is not a sentence anybody repeats, being neither information nor a story. The other householder had something. He sat down and played it when he had finished, and you should have heard the old thing. That gets said, in front of four people who own pianos.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your customer does not remember your work, he remembers how it ended, and the ending is the only part of it he can repeat. The hours in the middle, where all your cost and nearly all your skill are spent, leave almost no trace in the mind of the man who paid for them.

Do not take that from me. Take it from the last job you had done in your own house. You cannot describe the middle of it. What you have is the state of the hall when they left and whatever was said on the doorstep. That is your whole memory of several hundred pounds of work.

Memory does not average. It keeps the worst moment of a thing and the last moment and throws away the rest, which is how ninety seconds at a door outweighs two days of competence. This is no credit to people and I do not defend it. I say only that it is reliable, and therefore the cheapest lever you have: the middle of the job is where your money goes, and the last ten minutes cost nothing.

There is a second thing in it, and it compounds. An ending does not merely sit in the memory, it supplies the words. A recommendation is a sentence somebody must find and say aloud when he is not thinking of you, and vague approval gives him none. You are writing the line your customer will use when somebody asks him who he would have, and it will be believed, since he has nothing to gain by saying it.

Notice what divided those two men. Not effort, and not care. Both gave their last twelve minutes to something they need not have done. The first gave his to the part of the instrument nobody would hear, the second to the part of the morning the householder would never forget. One put his last effort where the work was, the other where his customer's only evidence was being made.

Two cautions. An ending will not carry poor work and must not be asked to. Memory keeps the worst moment as faithfully as the last, so a flourish at the door after a botched job does not cancel the botch. The second is that the ending must not be filled with you. The moment those ten minutes contain a request, for the next job or a card to be passed on or a few words written somewhere, you have traded the memory of good work for the memory of being asked a favour. Give them the thing, say the one useful sentence, and go.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What is the last thing my customer sees, hears or holds? Not what you intend it to be, but what it is at a quarter to five on a Friday, when the van is loaded and everybody wants their tea.
2. Who is in the room when the job ends? Usually whoever is cheapest to leave behind, so the most valuable ten minutes of the week are spent by the person least able to use them.
3. What one sentence could this customer say about it tomorrow? Write it down yourself. If you cannot find one, he will not find one either, and you have delivered satisfaction with nothing attached.

The Answer to the Riddle

Two tuners, the same forks and the same five shillings, and one left the room in silence while the other left it with the instrument sounding. Within three years one was tuning twice the pianos. Which, and why?

The second, and not because he tuned better, since he did not. A householder who cannot judge the work will judge the ending of it, and repeat the ending and nothing else. He spent his last ten minutes on something the parish could retell. The first spent his on an octave nobody would touch for a generation.

The verse:

The hours in the middle leave no mark that can be told,
And the care that no one saw you take is a coin that will not spend.
But the last half minute carries, and it carries in a sentence,
So put a thing worth saying in the minute at the end.

Until next time. Go and decide, for the job you finish today, what the last thing your customer hears will be, and change it if it is the sound of your bag being shut.

P.S. The same law runs the other way. Since the worst moment is kept as well as the last, the order in which trouble arrives decides how a job is remembered. A fortnight with the bad news and the delay and the awkward sum all in the first two days is remembered as a job that went well. Put the same trouble in the last two days and it is remembered as a bad job. Face the hard part early, not to be brave, but because the same events in a different order leave a different customer behind them.

Also in the archive: Twenty-Two Kitchens, The Faces He Took Down and The Dust in the Oil.