The Martinmas Overhaul

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man who wanted a thing done had first to find the words for it, and finding the words is harder than you remember, since you have known your own trade too long to recall being outside it.

Two harness makers in the old town, the same waxed thread and the same oak bark leather.
Both would strip a set of harness, wash it, feed it, restitch it and send it back the better.
One told every farmer at market that he would see to harness whenever it was wanted.
One gave that same work a name, a fortnight in the year, and a written list of what was in it.
Same trade, same hands, same charge within a shilling.
By the second November, whose yard had harness stacked to the rafters?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two harness makers worked within four hundred yards of one another in a town I have never named, and there was nothing to choose between them at the bench. Both knew that harness left standing through a wet winter comes out in March cracked at the folds, the stitching rotted where the sweat sat.

The first man said so, often. He said it at market on a Thursday, over the gate, and to any farmer who came in for a buckle. Bring it in whenever you like, he would say, and I will see to it properly and not charge you the earth. He meant it, and he was the more generous of the two, for he would put on a new hame strap and say nothing about it on the bill.

Very little harness came in. A farmer would say that he must do that, he really must, and then go home to a wet field and a sick heifer, and the harness hung behind the stable door where it had hung since Lady Day. He was not refusing. He had been handed a thing to arrange rather than a thing to buy, and that goes to the bottom of a list with no bottom.

The second man did one piece of work with a pen, and it took him an evening. He wrote out what he actually did to a set of harness: stripped to the buckles, washed in soft soap, dried slow and away from the fire, two feeds of dubbin worked in by hand, the rotten stitching cut out and resewn, billets and keepers renewed. Then he named the whole of it. He called it the Martinmas Overhaul, the harvest work being done by then and the ploughing not yet begun, and he put it on a card, on his shutter and on the slate outside his door. Taken in from the first of November, returned inside the fortnight, twelve shillings the set and fifteen for a carter's.

Nothing else changed. The leather was the same leather, and he was no better a stitcher in November than in June. What changed was what a farmer could say. He could say, in four words, put mine in for the Martinmas. His neighbour could repeat it at the smithy, and the man at the smithy could arrive with a bundle over his shoulder, say the name and be understood, which is a comfort to anybody who dislikes being thought ignorant in another trade's shop.

By the second year the yard was stacked to the rafters each November, the collars chalked with numbers, the street smelling of warm dubbin, and he had taken a boy on for the fortnight. The first man still said, sincerely, that he would see to harness whenever it was wanted.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A thing with no name cannot be asked for, and what cannot be asked for must be sold one conversation at a time, for as long as you live. You are not competing with the man down the road nearly as often as you suppose. You are competing with your customer's inability to say what he wants.

Consider what you oblige a person to do when your offer has no name. He must settle how much of the work he is ordering, which he cannot know. He must guess the cost, and guessing frightens him, since an open request to a tradesman is an open purse. He must then describe a job in a trade he never learned. Each is small, and together they keep a farmer in his own stable for three winters, meaning to call in.

A name clears all three at once, though only because of what sits behind it. The name is the handle and the written list is the thing carried. Put the two together and your work becomes an object, and people buy objects. They do not buy willingness, which is admirable and invisible: a customer cannot picture it, price it, or repeat it. A neighbour with nothing to pass on but a warm feeling says that you are very good, which sends nobody anywhere, as we saw in the difference between a noun to nod at and a picture a stranger carries home.

Someone will object that this is a trick of words, the work being identical. It is a trick of words, and that is the defence of it. The naming makes no claim about the leather. It alters only what your customer can do with his mouth, and that governs whether the work happens at all. The objection would carry if a name could stand in place of a thing, and it cannot. Name a service you perform carelessly and you have only made your carelessness easier to discuss by the half dozen. A name is a promise made sayable, a gift to an honest man and a loaded pistol to a sloppy one.

Two cautions. The first is that the name must describe and not amuse. A clever name wants explaining, and a name that wants explaining has failed at its only task, which is to cross a gate without you. The second is to name one thing only. A man with six named services has given the town a catalogue to ignore in place of a phrase to learn.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What do people actually ask me for, in their own words? Keep a sheet by the telephone for a week and write down the exact phrasing of every enquiry. The name you want is usually in somebody's mouth already, worn smooth by use, and you have spent years correcting it into trade language of your own.
2. Could a satisfied customer send me a neighbour without me in the room? Say your offer aloud as a farmer would over a gate. If it runs past about six words it will not survive the journey, and a recommendation you earned arrives as nothing more useful than your surname.
3. What exactly is in it, and what is not? Write the operations, the time and the price before you write the name. If you cannot fix the content you are not ready to fix the word, and giving the town a date will serve you better this month than any naming.

The Answer to the Riddle

By the second November, whose yard had harness stacked to the rafters?

The second man's, and he was not the better harness maker. He was the one who had given a farmer something to say. The first offered a service and the second a thing, and the difference lies not in the leather but in four words a tired man can get out at a gate in the rain. Every trade has a Martinmas Overhaul hidden inside it, described at length to people who will never find the words to ask.

The verse:

You may do the work honestly, fully and well,
and still watch the custom go by,
for nobody orders a thing without name,
and nobody likes to ask why.

Until next time. Go and write down, in plain words, the name of the one piece of work you most want to be asked for, and under it the list of everything in it.

P.S. The name does a second job nobody expects, and it is done on you rather than on your customer. An unnamed service cannot be counted, so you never learn whether you sold more of it this year than last, nor which part of it the complaints attach to. Name it and it becomes a line you can keep: eleven in November, nineteen the year after, four back for the stitching. You cannot improve a service you have never been able to refer to.

Also in the archive: Who Sent You, The Single Errand and Four Syllables in the Clay.