The Prices Nobody Argued With

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, where two confectioners boiled sugar in the same kind of copper pan, and each kept a card of prices on a nail beside the scales.

Two confectioners in one town, the same sugar and the same copper pans.
Both kept a card of fourteen prices by the scales.
Both altered a price whenever a customer argued about one.
One of them also altered prices that nobody had ever mentioned.
Three years on, he was taking half again as much out of the same sugar.
Which, and which of the other's prices was quietly ruining him?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two confectioners, in a town I have never named. The same grocer sent both the same loaf sugar on the same cart. Both kept a card of fourteen lines by the scales: barley sugar twists at sixpence the pound, mixed boiled sweets, candied peel, almond comfits, lettering on a cake, carriage to a house, and eight more. Over three years the makings moved, as makings do: sugar up about a fifth, almonds doubled after a bad season, coal dearer. A penny here and a farthing there, over thirty-six months of invoices both men paid without reading twice.

The first confectioner altered three of his fourteen prices in that time, and each for a reason he could have defended to anybody. He raised the wedding cake, every bride's mother having asked whether it could be done for less, and a figure asked about twice a month stays under your eye. He lowered the pound of mixed boiled sweets, the shop in the next street keeping its own card in the window where a child could read it. And he struck out the carriage charge, a householder having objected to threepence for a walk of two hundred yards.

The eleven lines nobody had ever said a word about he did not touch. Barley sugar at sixpence the pound had been chalked up the week he took the shop, when the sugar in a pound of twists cost him threepence. It now cost him fourpence and a farthing, and the sixpence had never moved. Barley sugar was also the line most often weighed out in his shop, bought by habit. He was busier each year and no better off, and said the town had less money in it than it used to.

The second confectioner did a dull hour four times a year. On the first Monday of January, April, July and October he sat down with the card off its nail, the spike of his invoices and the day book. He went down the fourteen lines, writing beside each the date he last altered it and what its makings cost him that month, deciding nothing until all fourteen were written out. A man who decides as he goes stops at the first line he can bear to leave alone.

Then he changed them in one stroke. Seven lines up, four left as they stood, and two down on purpose, those being the mixed sweets and the ha'penny tray, the only lines every household could price from memory. Those he made keener than the next street, and said so on the card. One line went altogether, the almond comfits, which no price he would write could carry.

Be fair to the first man, who was neither lazy nor timid. He had changed every price a customer ever mentioned, which most trades call listening to the market. His customers only ever mentioned what they could compare.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A price is only ever corrected by the customer who argues with it, so the prices nobody argues with are the ones quietly going wrong. Objection is not evenly spread. It follows whatever is on show elsewhere, so that a figure can be set beside a figure. And it follows the large purchase, thought about in advance and argued over aloud in company, where a man is expected to resist a little on principle. Neither has any connection to your profit.

It does not follow habit, nor the odd extra, the small repair, the carriage, the setting up, the half hour of your most skilled work. And it never follows the item a customer has no means of judging, which is precisely where you ought to be earning. So your list divides in two: the watched half, which the town corrects for you year after year whether you want it or not, and the unwatched half, where your costs move as surely as anywhere else and your hand does not. A price with no date on it was not set by you, but by a younger version of yourself who bought cheaper materials and worked faster, and he is not available to be consulted.

You will be told to put everything up by a tenth each January and have done with it. That defeats drift, but a tenth on a sixpence that ought to be ninepence leaves you fourpence short and feeling the matter attended to. The hour taken line by line ends where no rule reaches: a third on one, nothing on four, two reductions made deliberately, and one line stopped altogether.

The drift is worse in this century, not better, because nothing is chalked and nothing is handled. A figure in a page on your website will look as current as the day you typed it. Write the date beside it, and remember that part of what it must carry never appears on any invoice, which is the second column in the day book.

Two cautions. Review often, move a price once, since a figure that shifts every few months teaches your customers to wait, to ask, and to treat every price as an opening position. Where people buy weekly, tell them before they find it out at the counter, with a reason and a date, in the way of the note written out in January. And without the invoices in front of you, do not begin. An hour spent estimating what things cost you now is an hour spent reaching the comfortable answer while feeling prudent.

Three questions, and the first wants a date rather than an opinion:

1. When did each of your prices last change? Write a date beside every figure on your list. The ones you cannot date will not be a random selection: they will be the quiet ones.
2. Which three of your lines has nobody ever questioned? Read those first, against what the materials or the work cost you this month, not what you remember. If one is the thing you do most often, a farthing on it is a wage.
3. Which of your prices tells the town you are keen? One or two should be visibly sharp, chosen by you, on the lines where sharpness is noticed and paid for out of the eleven nobody mentions.

The Answer to the Riddle

One of them also altered prices that nobody had ever mentioned. Which, and which of the other's prices was quietly ruining him?

The second confectioner, with his four dull hours a year. The price ruining the first was the sixpenny barley sugar, chalked up the week he opened and never read again while the sugar in it rose a third underneath him. The prices that ruin a trade are not the ones you argue about. They are the ones you have stopped seeing.

The verse:

The price they haggle over keeps
As honest as the day.
It is the figure none remark
That quietly slips away.

Until next time. Go and write, beside every price you charge, the date you last changed it.

P.S. A second selection works here, a tender one. New customers argue and people of eleven years' standing do not, the figure having been settled long ago between friends, so that raising it would feel like a small betrayal on both sides. Your oldest and best customers are therefore often on your oldest prices, and some of the loyalty you are proud of is a discount you have forgotten you are giving. Tell them first, by hand, before the card goes up.

Also in the archive: The Weaver's Four Sentences, The Old Price Until Lady Day and The Second Column.