The Last Twenty Minutes

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, on a Thursday afternoon, when two jobs end at two houses within the same hour, and only one of the householders is sure it has ended at all.

Two plasterers finish on the Thursday,
Same wall, same skill, same careful hand.
One loads his cart and lifts his cap,
One stays to walk her round the room.
Same work, same price, same honest finish.
Which wall did the street hear about?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two plasterers in the town I've never named, and I can tell you with some confidence that their walls were equally good, because I have run my hand along both. Each had spent four days on a front parlour. Each had done the difficult part properly, which in plastering is the part behind the skirting and around the old chimney breast, where nobody will ever look and where most of the trouble begins.

The first finished at a quarter to four. He swept, which was decent of him, loaded the cart, knocked on the kitchen door and said he was done. The householder came through, looked at a wall that was grey and damp and darker at one end than the other, and said it looked fine. He thanked her and went.

She stood in the room for some time afterwards. There was a patch near the window that looked, to her, like a mistake. There was a smell she had not expected. She did not know whether she was allowed to open the window, or hang the pictures, or light the fire, and she did not know whom to ask, because the man who knew had just turned the corner at the end of the street. When a neighbour asked her the following week how it had gone, she said it seemed all right, she supposed, and changed the subject.

The second plasterer finished at a quarter past three and did not tell anybody for twenty minutes.

He used them to walk the householder round her own parlour. He showed her the chimney breast and told her what he had found behind it, and what he had done about it, which she would otherwise never have known, since the whole point of the work was that it now looked like nothing. He told her three things that would happen: the room would smell of lime for a week, the wall would stay darker at the window end until it dried, and some night soon she would hear a small tick from the corner and should not worry about it. He told her not to light the fire until Sunday and not to hang anything until the following Saturday. He gave her a date, a fortnight off, on which he would look in to see it dry.

And then he asked her, plainly, whether she was pleased with it.

She said she was. And because she had been asked, and because she had just been shown the chimney breast, she meant it. When her neighbour asked her the following week, she took him into the parlour and showed him where the trouble had been.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The customer forms her opinion of the whole job in the last twenty minutes, because that is the only part she is fully present for. She was out for most of the four days. She did not see the difficult work, could not have judged it if she had, and has nothing to go on but the room as it is handed to her and the manner in which it is handed.

And a finished job, in most trades, does not look finished. A new wall is grey and blotched, a new roof is invisible, a repaired boiler looks exactly like the broken one. At the moment of handover the work is at its least impressive, and the customer is at her most uncertain, and the man who knows what she is looking at is usually already reaching for his keys.

So the handover is not a courtesy after the job. It is the part of the job the customer actually buys, and it has three movements. Show her what she cannot see, since the hidden difficulty is where your skill lives and she will never find it unaided; the small visible flaw will otherwise do all the talking. Name what happens next, so that the smell and the tick and the dark patch arrive as things she was promised rather than things she fears. And ask whether she is pleased, which gives her the chance to raise the patch by the window while you are still in the room to explain it.

That last question matters more than it looks. A customer who is never asked will form her doubts in private, and private doubts become the tone in which she describes you. A customer who is asked, and answers, has made a small public statement, and people tend to stand by what they have said aloud. It is the same principle the masons with witnesses relied on, applied at the other end of the work.

Two cautions. Do not let the walk round become a speech about how hard you worked, which is a request for gratitude and will be heard as one; describe what you found and what you did, and let her supply the adjective. And do not ask whether she is pleased while holding the invoice, since a question asked with a bill in the other hand is not a question.

Three questions, and think of the last job you finished:

1. What did you do that she will never see? Write it down. If it is nothing, you are underselling the work. If it is something, it belongs in the walk round.
2. What will she notice in the next fortnight that might worry her? Every trade has its smell, its tick, its dark patch. Name them before she finds them, and they become proof that you know your business.
3. Did you ask her, in so many words, whether she was pleased? Not whether everything was all right, which invites a polite yes, but whether she was pleased with it, which invites the truth.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which wall did the street hear about?

The second, and for no reason that had anything to do with plaster. Both walls were sound, and both men had been careful with the chimney breast. But only one householder knew about the chimney breast, and only one had been told that the smell would pass, and only one had been asked, while the plasterer was still standing there, whether she was pleased. The first job was over. The second was finished. Your customer can tell the difference even when she cannot tell a good wall from a bad one.

The verse:

She did not watch the four long days,
She only sees the room you leave.
So walk her round and name what comes,
And ask her plainly, then, and go.

Until next time. Go and write down the three things every customer of yours should hear before you leave the job, and say them at the next one.

P.S. The date in a fortnight does more work than the visit itself. Most customers will never need you to come, and many will ring to say not to bother. But the job now has a second ending, a small one, and it is the one they remember when somebody asks whom they used.

Also in the archive: Ten Days After, The Parted Seam and The Coal in the Yard.