The Notice at the Orchard Gate

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, at the orchard gate in September, where two growers have each nailed up a notice against the scrumping of apples.

Two orchards guard one hanging crop,
Same walls, same lads who will not stop.
One writes: they take them every night.
One writes: our neighbours do what's right.
Same words of warning, near enough.
Whose trees were stripped? And why so rough?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two orchard keepers outside the town I've never named, and their apples, in the old chorus, were equally worth stealing. Same walls, same lane, same boys walking home past both gates.

The first had lost a great deal of fruit and wanted it known. So he nailed up a notice at the gate, and every word of it was true and every word of it was aggrieved. A great quantity of fruit is taken from this orchard every season, a little at a time, by persons who think it does no harm.

He lost more apples the following year than he had the year before, and could not understand it, and put a second notice beside the first.

What he had done, without any idea he was doing it, was tell every boy in the parish that taking apples from that orchard was ordinary. Not permitted, certainly, and the notice said as much. But usual: the sort of thing people do, a little at a time, without thinking it harm. And a boy at a gate at dusk is not weighing the law, he is weighing whether he would be odd, and the notice had answered that question for him in the kindest possible way.

The second keeper wrote a shorter notice. Nearly everyone who walks this lane leaves our fruit alone. Please do the same, and if you want an apple, knock.

He lost hardly any.

The difference is not in the sternness, since neither notice was stern and the first was arguably the more indignant of the two. It is that one told a boy what people around here do, and the other told him what people around here mostly do, and they were opposite reports. Nobody wishes to be the only honest person at a gate everyone else is robbing, and almost nobody wishes to be the one lad in the lane who takes what others leave.

And there is a version of this at every counter in the town, which is where it concerns you. The chandler with a sign asking customers please not to handle the goods, since so many do. The carrier apologising in advance for the delays that have become so common. The tradesman who says most people leave this far too long. Every one of them has told a stranger, with the best intentions and out of honest exasperation, exactly what is normal, and people take instruction from that far more readily than from any request.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Never advertise the frequency of the thing you want stopped. A complaint about how often something happens is heard as a report on what people do, and a report on what people do is the strongest instruction there is. You may disapprove in the same breath, at length, and it will not help: the disapproval is your opinion and the frequency is a fact about the world, and a person deciding quickly will take the fact.

So look at where you have done it, since almost every trade has. The notice about how many customers cancel late. The line in your terms explaining that some people do not pay on time. The weary sentence about how most people leave this until it has become expensive. Each of those is true, each was written out of real irritation, and each quietly informs a new customer that late cancellation, slow payment and long delay are what your customers generally do.

The cure is to say the true thing from the other end, which is nearly always available and rarely used. Most of our customers book the following April before they leave. Nearly everybody settles within the week. The people who do this properly have it looked at every second year. Not invented, mind: if the majority genuinely does the bad thing, you have a business problem rather than a wording problem, and no clever sentence will paper over it.

Then add the request, since the description alone is not enough. Tell them what most people do, and then say plainly what you would like them to do, which is the demonstration lesson arriving in a quieter setting: the ask must still be made, in words, or a willing person will not know what is wanted.

And note the wider case, which is the one this letter is really for. The same mechanism is at work every time you describe your customers to themselves: they are learning, from your description, what sort of people use you. Describe them as difficult and you will get difficulty; describe them, truthfully, as people who plan ahead and settle promptly, and a fair number will rise to it.

Three questions, and go and read your own notices before answering:

1. Where have you complained about frequency? Go through your terms, your signs, your standard messages and your invoice notes. Mark every sentence that says how often something bad happens. Each one is a lesson you are teaching for nothing.
2. What is the true majority statement? For each of those, write the version that describes what most of your customers actually do, provided it is true. If it is not true, you have found a real problem and the wording was never the trouble.
3. Have you asked as well as described? After the true description, add the plain request and the practical detail. Nearly everybody settles within the week, and payment is due by the fifteenth, is worth more than either half alone.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose trees were stripped?

The man who told the parish that his apples were being taken. He was telling the truth, he was in the right, and he was quietly recruiting every boy in the lane by informing them that scrumping was the local custom. His neighbour reported a different truth about the same lane, that most people leave the fruit alone, and each boy who read it did what people do, which is roughly what he believes people do.

The verse:

Say all men steal, and all men will,
For none wants standing on the hill.
Say most leave be, and add your ask,
And you have set an easy task.

Until next time. Go and find one notice of yours that complains about how often something happens, and rewrite it as what most of your customers truly do, with the request beside it.

P.S. The reason this error is so common is that the aggrieved notice is written for the writer rather than the reader. It is a small piece of revenge, taken in ink, against the people who have been taking your apples. Understandable, and expensive, and the tell is that you felt slightly better after writing it.

Also in the archive: The Mason's Witnesses, The One-Star Reply and Read It Aloud at Home.