The Shutter at Seven

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two binders of books, both particular men, and the difference between their years was settled by a clock no customer ever saw.

Two bookbinders in one street, the same calf from the same tanner, the same boards and brass.
Both had more work in hand than they could carry, and both meant to do it well.
One worked each evening until the work was done, which it never was, often to eleven.
One shut his shop at seven, whatever stood unfinished on the bench.
A year on, the second had bound more books, spoiled less leather and kept more dates.
He had spent the fewer hours at the bench of the two. Why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two bookbinders, in a town I have never named. Their shops stood four doors apart. Both sewed on tapes, both pared their leather thin at the joint, both kept a finishing stove with the brass tools laid along it. Neither was the better workman and neither was idle. And every autumn more work came in than two hands could hold.

One difference. The second binder worked until the work was done. The first shut his shop at seven.

Consider what the second man's evenings were. Finishing cannot be hurried and cannot be done twice. The tool comes off the stove, you judge its heat by touching it to a damp cloth and listening, and you have a moment to set it square on the gold. Too hot and there is a scorch across the spine. Too cool and the leaf will not take. Crooked is crooked for the life of the book. At ten at night, after fourteen hours, a man's hands are as honest as they were at nine and his judgement is not. He burned a spine in October on a doctor's set of six, and there is no mending a burn. A Thursday morning went on undoing that Wednesday night, and he counted the Thursday as bad luck.

Now consider the first man's day, once it had a wall at the end. Because seven was not negotiable, the hours before it had to be ranked, and he ranked them by what each wanted of him. The gold went on in the morning, in north light, with the hand steady. Paring and sewing in the afternoon, which want care but not fine judgement. The last half hour took the ledger, which a tired man can still do honestly. He did not arrive at this by thinking cleverly. The seven o'clock forced it.

Then the larger thing happened. By November he could see in midweek that the week was full, because a day had an edge and the bench had a bottom. So when the vicar came in with four volumes wanted by the month's end, he did not say he would try. He named the second week in December, and the vicar, let down twice that year by a man who always said yes, took the date gladly. The other binder took the same work on a bench never once measured against a clock, and was eleven days late.

Be fair to the man who worked late. He was not greedy and not disorganised. He stayed because somebody was waiting and he could not bear to disappoint them, and the lamp felt like conscience. Nobody asked him to work until eleven and nobody thanked him for it, because nobody knew. What his customers saw was a man whose dates moved.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Until you name the hour your work stops, nothing in your day has to be chosen and nothing in your week can be counted. The late hour feels like the most virtuous thing you do. It is very often the most expensive.

Take the plain cost first. The hours at the end of a long day are the worst you own. They are the ones in which the figure is transposed, the measurement taken from the wrong edge, the clause agreed that you would have queried at ten in the morning. You do not pay for a late hour at the rate of a late hour. You pay at the rate of the good morning spent undoing it.

The second cost is worse. A trade with no closing hour can never discover that it is full. Full is a fact about a container, and you have not got one. So you take the extra job, since it can always go in the evening, and price it as a man whose evenings are free. I have argued that a price must be set against the week as well as the work, and that wants a week of known size. The shape of a day is a commercial instrument, not a comfort.

There is a fair objection and it should be met. Some weeks genuinely require the lamp. A tide does not wait, and a stand must be built before the fair opens. So a closing hour is a rule with a stated exception rather than a vow, and the value lies in the exception being decided rather than drifted into. The man who works until eleven four times a year, knowing what each buys, has a trade. The man who does it because it is Tuesday has a habit dressed as virtue.

Two cautions. First, an hour that merely moves the work from the bench to the kitchen table is not a closing hour but a change of address, and your household knows it even if you have decided otherwise. Second, do not shorten the day and keep every promise you made when it had no end. The first week of a real seven o'clock will show you one job too many. That is not proof the idea is impractical. It is the information you have been working late to avoid, and the answer is a later date or a higher price, not a longer lamp. It is also why the work nobody stands in front of you asking for gets done early in the day or not at all.

Three questions, and the first wants doing before the week is out:

1. At what hour did you actually stop on each of the last six days? Write them from memory tonight, then the true ones over the next six days, and see how far apart the columns sit.
2. What work has moved into the hours after six, and did you decide to put it there? Quoting, invoicing, planning. Almost nobody chooses to do the thinking part of a trade at the hour their judgement is poorest. Almost everybody does it.
3. What was done twice last month, and when was it first done? The job put right, the order placed wrongly. Note the hour against each. Four entries will settle this better than I can.

The Answer to the Riddle

He had spent the fewer hours at the bench of the two. Why?

Because the hour that ends a day is what makes the hours before it choose. The binder who stopped at seven put his fine work where his judgement was and his accounts in the half hour good for nothing else. He spoiled less leather because he never gilded tired, and kept his dates because he could see when his week was full. The other had more hours and no arrangement, and spent his mornings undoing his evenings.

The verse:

The lamp burns on and the work looks willing,
But the tired hand lays the gold awry.
Put a wall at the end of the day you are given,
And the hours before it will stand in line.

Until next time. Go and write in your diary, for each of the next six days, the hour at which you will stop, and stop at it.

P.S. The closing hour also protects the goodwill you imagine you are spending. Answer at eleven at night often enough and you do not earn gratitude, you set a standard, and the evening you then do not answer is read as neglect. The man who replies at nine each morning is thought reliable. The man who replies at eleven at night, most times, is thought unreliable on the night he does not. Same care, and only the hour between them.

Also in the archive: The Hour Nobody Claimed, Nine Weeks in a Tin and The Ladder in January.