The Monday He Kept Empty

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town the man with more work than hours thought himself the luckiest tradesman on the street, and was very often the poorest.

Two pump makers in one town, the same elm trunks and the same leather.
Both with three weeks of work on the books and a lad to help them.
Both took their orders in the order the orders arrived.
One had every hour of his week sold before the week began.
The other left the first Monday of every month unsold on purpose.
Only one ended the year with more money. Which, and why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two pump makers, in the town I have never named, bored their barrels out of the same elm and cut their buckets from the same hides, and both had three weeks of work waiting that autumn. Dull work, most of it. A new pump for a new row of cottages, four pounds ten and a fortnight in the making, and nobody in any hurry about it.

Then in the middle of November a dairy farmer two miles out came into the first yard with his hat in his hand. His cattle yard pump had seized, and forty cows were being watered out of a low brook by bucket, which took a man and a half from daylight until the middle of the afternoon.

The first pump maker looked at his book, an honest book, and said a fortnight, with real regret. Four people had asked before the farmer, and it would not be right to put a man who came on Tuesday in front of a man who came in October. The farmer stood in the road and did a sum he did not enjoy. A man and a half at two shillings the day, for fourteen days, to save a fifteen shilling repair. He came back in and asked whether nothing could be done, and the pump maker, who hated the question, said he would see. He sat up two evenings with a lamp, sent his bill for the usual fifteen shillings, and told nobody that the cottage pump due on the Friday went out on the Monday instead.

The second pump maker kept a card on his shop wall with three lines on it. The price of a pump. The price of a mending. And a third line saying that work begun within three days of asking was charged one third above the figure, and that the first Monday of every month was kept clear for it.

When the same trouble came to his door, and it came most months, he did not look at his book at all. He said he could begin on the Monday, and the mending would be fifteen shillings with five on top. Then he did the farmer's arithmetic out loud. Five shillings today, or a man and a half carrying water until the end of the month. The farmer paid the five and thought it the cheapest money he had spent that year.

When a householder came on the second Monday wanting hers mended inside the week, he told her the fast Monday was gone until December, that he would not sell it twice, and that she was welcome to the Thursday after next at the ordinary price. She was not pleased. She was not insulted either, having read the card before she was ever in trouble.

At the year's end the first man had worked more evenings and taken what he took the year before. The second had sold eleven Mondays at a third more. One of them had noticed what he was short of.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

When there is more work than there are hours, the thing you are selling is no longer the work but the place in the queue. And a place in the queue is the one thing on your price list with no price on it.

A single figure for a job assumes that waiting costs every customer the same. It never does. The row of cottages loses nothing by waiting three weeks. The farmer loses three shillings for every day you make him wait. They are not buying the same thing even when the pump is identical, and charging them alike is a failure to look rather than a fairness.

Take orders strictly as they arrive and you are still rationing your week, only by who happened to ask first. The money the farmer would have parted with existed whether the first pump maker took it or not. He did not take it, so it went into a lad's wages for carrying water, and he had two late evenings and a grudge instead. That is the trouble of a rush job nobody charged for. The favour is paid for by you, or by a customer further down the book who is moved without being asked.

A premium for haste is accepted readily because the customer is not weighing it against your ordinary price. He is weighing it against his own loss, which is nearly always the larger number, and your part is to say that number out loud in his money. Five shillings against thirty is not a negotiation, it is a relief. It also tells you who is truly in haste, since half of those who must have it by Friday only must while Friday is free.

Now the objection, which is fair. People do hate to see a queue jumped. But look at what is resented. Not the paying. It is the suspicion that the front of the queue is sold privately, to whoever stands nearest the owner, and that your wait was invented to make the premium necessary. Both are answered by publishing one figure where it can be read before anybody is in trouble. The householder was refused by a rule she had read, which is an annoyance, rather than by a favour denied her, which is an injury.

None of it works without the part that feels like waste, which is holding the hours back. A fast lane sold out of a full week is a promise kept by robbing somebody. Leave the hours unsold and treat them as stock on a shelf rather than as idleness. Four idle hours in July bought eleven premiums. It is pricing the week as well as the work, turned about: there you sell the slack season cheap, here you keep a little of the busy season dear.

Two cautions. Never let the ordinary wait stretch to make the premium look reasonable. Do that and you have begun to sell your own delay, and customers will notice in time that your calendar is an argument rather than a record. The second is that the premium is for speed and not for distress. It is named before you know who is in front of you, and it is the same for the farmer with the dry yard and the gentleman who dislikes waiting. A tariff anyone may buy is a service. A number that rises with misfortune is a toll on bad luck.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What does a week of waiting cost my most impatient customer? Work it out in his money and not in yours, in wages or lost trade or a shut door, and keep the sum where you can say it aloud.
2. How much of next week am I willing to leave unsold? Name the hours and the day. Capacity you have not reserved is capacity you will take from somebody who paid for it.
3. What is my figure for going first, and where can a customer read it? If it lives only in your head it is a favour, and favours cannot be charged for.

The Answer to the Riddle

Only one ended the year with more money. Which, and why?

The second, because the man who has sold every hour of his week before it begins has nothing left for the customer who would have paid most. A full book looks like prosperity and is often only a shortage you have not priced. Keep a little of the week back and put a plain figure on the front of the queue.

The verse:

The book is full from end to end, there is no hour to sell,
And here comes one who needs it now and needs it rather well.
Keep back a Monday from the month and name the price of haste,
For hours you never set aside are hours somebody wastes.

Until next time. Go and write one line on your price list today naming what it costs to begin within three days, and block out the first Monday of next month to hold it.

P.S. The device works backwards as well. Find the customers who genuinely do not mind which week you come, and pay them something for it in a small reduction or a better fitting. They are the slack that lets you sell the front of the queue at all.

Also in the archive: Boards Until Thursday, Never Once Refused and The Crowded End.