The Same Tuesday

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in a wet October when the tanner's cart came late up the hill, two bookbinders took in the same work on the same Monday and both finished it on the same Tuesday.

Two binders in one street, the same calf and the same thread,
Same press, same paste, the same three ledgers on the bench.
Both finished on the Tuesday, within an hour of each other.
One had promised the Friday before. One the Friday after.
The street called one man quick and learned to chase the other.
Which of them was late?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two bookbinders in the town I've never named, both good with their hands. A corn merchant sent three ledgers across to each of them that autumn, twenty years of accounts, the spines gone and the boards hanging by a thread of linen. The same work in both shops: pull the old covers, mend the torn leaves, sew afresh on cords, cut the calf, paste, press, and leave it to dry before the tooling goes on.

The first binder was asked when he could have them back, and he did what an honest man does. He counted the days. The hide from the tanner on the Wednesday, sewing on the Thursday, paste that night, dry by Friday morning, tooled and wrapped by noon. He said Friday. He was neither boasting nor careless. He had bound three books in exactly that order in August, in a dry week, with everything to hand.

October was not August. The tanner's cart was a day behind and the hide was short, so one board waited on the next delivery. The second ledger had a dozen leaves torn at the gutter, an afternoon of mending nobody can see afterwards. And the week was wet, and wet weather will not let paste dry to the hour you would like. He finished on the Tuesday. Between the Friday and the Tuesday the merchant's clerk came round twice, and twice the binder stopped work, wiped his hands and apologised.

Across the street the second binder had the same three troubles in the same week, they being the weather's and the tanner's rather than his. Asked when the books would be ready, he said the Friday week, and did not explain himself. He began that afternoon, exactly as his rival did, and finished on the Tuesday within the hour. Then he sent the boy across with four lines to say the work was done and could be fetched whenever it suited. The merchant was pleased in a small way, and said so to two other men that week.

Neither man was quicker. If anything the first was the finer workman, and his gold tooling the better of the two. But his year went on as his October had. A promise broken in one week is repaid out of the next, since the customer who has been made anxious calls and stands in the doorway, and the work he interrupts belongs to somebody else. He began the year three days behind, was a fortnight behind by August, and was always about to catch up. Two winters later the parish wanted its registers rebound, and the churchwarden went across the street. A lovely craftsman, he said, but you had to keep after him.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your customer does not measure the day you finish, he measures the distance between the day you finish and the day you said. That distance is the whole of his experience of your reliability, and you set it yourself before a single tool is lifted. Two men can work at the same speed and finish within an hour of each other, and one is remembered as quick and the other as a man who wants chasing. The work did not decide that. The sentence did.

Look at where the usual date comes from. Nearly every trade names the day the job could be done in a week when the materials arrive, the weather holds, the customer answers at the first asking and nothing hidden turns up. That week exists. It comes round perhaps twice a year. A date taken from it will be missed most of the time, and a promise missed most of the time is not a promise, it is a hope you have invited somebody to arrange his affairs around.

The arithmetic is lopsided, which is why it matters more than it looks. Three days early buys a small pleasure and a remark to a neighbour. Three days late costs an apology, a chased telephone call, a customer who now builds his own margin on top of yours, and a story he will tell accurately for years. Worse, it devalues everything you say afterwards. A man who has been late once is heard differently the next time he names a day, and the customer discounts it privately by the amount he thinks you are wrong. You can no longer be believed cheaply, which is a real expense, since being believed is most of what naming a date plainly is for.

So name the date you could keep in a bad week, then work as though you had promised the good one. The gap is private, and what the customer notices is that in ten jobs you were not once late, which no amount of skill can buy and no advertisement can claim credibly.

Two cautions. First, a margin is not a longer wait. It must not become a reason to begin on the Thursday because you have until the Friday week. Start when you would have started, or you have merely moved your lateness along. Where speed is genuinely what the customer is buying, shorten the work rather than lengthen the word. Second, the margin is worth nothing if you sit on finished work until the day you named. The moment it is done, say so. A note on the Tuesday to say the books are ready is the whole of the gift, and costs no more than the note you send before you begin.

Three questions, before you name your next date:

1. Where did your usual date come from? If it is the day the job takes when nothing goes wrong, ask how many weeks this year had nothing wrong with them. That is how often your promise is good.
2. Of your last ten jobs, how many arrived on the day you said? Fewer than nine and you are quoting a hope. Take the second worst of the ten and name the date you would have kept even then.
3. Who tells whom when the date moves? Moved early by you, it is a courtesy. Discovered late by him, after a call he had to make, it is a broken promise, though the work was finished on the same afternoon either way.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them was late?

The first, by three days, having finished at the same hour as a man the street thought quick. Neither was slow. One named the Friday that hope allowed him, and spent two years apologising for a difference that existed only because he had invented the Friday. The other named a day he could keep in a wet week with a short hide, kept it with time to spare, and was paid for the surplus in the currency a small trade lives on, which is being spoken well of by people who were not asked.

The verse:

The paste was slow, the hide came short, the rain
Fell on the pair of them the selfsame way.
One named the day that hope had made him certain,
One named the day he knew that he could pay.

Until next time. Go and add three days to the next date you promise, then do the work on the day you always would have.

P.S. Keep two columns in a book for a month, the date you promised and the date the work actually went out, and write nothing else. Most trades have never seen those columns side by side, and filling them is the cheapest audit there is. The column on the right is your work. The column on the left is your reputation.

Also in the archive: The Bell on the Far Bank, Unless I Hear Otherwise and The Last Twenty Minutes.