The Small Brass Plate

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the years when the better streets were being piped for gas, two fitters worked the same rows of houses.

Two gasfitters, the same lead pipe and the same brackets,
The same neat joints, the same shilling, the same swept floor at the end.
One left his card with the cook and went on to the next street.
One spent fourpence on a plate of brass and screwed it inside the meter cupboard.
Three winters later the lights sank low in a house and one burner roared.
Whose name did the householder send for?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two gasfitters in the town I've never named, and their work, in the old chorus, was equally good. The same lead pipe, the same brackets from the same founder, the same shilling for the same hour, and both of them men who swept up after themselves.

The first fitter piped a tall house on the west side over four days of a cold March. He did it properly, running the pipe where it could be got at again, soaping every joint and watching for the bubble, and when the parlour bracket lit without a flutter he let the daughter of the house turn the tap herself. He swept the plaster dust into a bag and carried it out, gave the cook his card at the door, said any trouble, send for me, and went on.

The second fitter piped the house but one along, the following month, to the same standard. Then, before he packed his bag, he did a thing that took two minutes. He opened the cupboard where the meter sat and screwed to the inside of the door a plate of brass the size of a playing card. On it was stamped his name, his street, the month and the year, the size of the pipe he had run, and one line more: to shut off the gas, turn this tap a quarter to the right. The plate cost fourpence. He fixed one in every house he piped.

Three winters went over the town, which is long enough for a house to forget a tradesman. The cook took a place in the country, the kitchen drawer was turned out at the spring cleaning and the cards went into the range with the old almanacks, and the daughter married and moved away. What remained was a widow of sixty in a house that had always had gas in it, the way it had always had stairs.

In the November of that third winter the lights in the second house sank to a blue thread and the burner on the landing began to roar. The householder went to the meter cupboard, because that is where a person goes, and on the inside of the door was a small dull plate telling her which way to turn the tap. She turned it, the roaring stopped, and she slept. In the morning she sent the boy to the street stamped under the name.

The same fault reached the tall house a fortnight later, the two being on one worn main. There the widow stood at her cupboard with no idea whom to send for. She knew a man had done the work. She could not have told you his name for fifty pounds. So she asked at the gate, and her neighbour, who had the plate, gave her the name on it.

Be fair to the first man. He was neither careless nor idle. He gave out his card, asked to be sent for, and did work good enough that anybody who could remember him would have had him back. His whole mistake was to leave his name in a drawer, and a drawer is turned out every few springs. So is a memory.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your customer will not remember your name, so leave it fixed to the thing that is going to go wrong. Trades treat being remembered as a question of impression, supposing that if the work is good enough the name will stay. It will not. Names go the way of the cook and the drawer. What stays is screwed to something nobody has a reason to move.

The mechanism is duller and more reliable than memory. A householder with a fault does not search her recollection for a good tradesman. She looks at the nearest surface to the trouble, then she asks the nearest person. Those are the only two places your name can usefully be, and the second is not in your gift. The first is, for fourpence. You cannot advertise at the moment a burner roars, since you do not know when that moment will come. You can post the message years early and let the fault carry it.

There is a second gain, larger over ten years. A plate with a date on it turns a job done once into a standing arrangement nobody had to be sold, since a householder who reads a date understands that this was seen to at a particular time and will want seeing to again. That is selling the arrangement rather than the occasion without asking anybody to sign anything. Good work leaves an opinion. This leaves an object.

And it costs nothing, which matters more than it sounds. Told to market themselves, most trades picture money going out. You are already in the house, and have already earned the right to be there. The job itself is the advertisement, and leaving no mark on it throws away the one piece of advertising the customer has paid for.

Two cautions. First, the mark must be worth keeping to the person whose wall it is on, or it is graffiti and comes off. A name alone is graffiti. A name with the date and which way to turn the tap is useful, and a useful thing is defended by the householder when the decorators want it down. Ask before you fix it, and keep it small. Second, it must stay true. A plate bearing a street you left two years ago wastes the one enquiry you spent three winters earning. Stamp nothing you would not honour in nine years.

Three questions, before you finish the next job:

1. When your work goes wrong, what is the customer looking at? The boiler lid, the fuse board, the back of the machine. That surface is the whole of your advertising estate, and it is free.
2. What could go on it that the household would want to keep? The date, the parts, the settings, the one instruction that saves a panic at midnight. Write what they need and your name is carried along with it, unresented.
3. How many of the houses you worked in this year carry your name today? Count marks still fixed, not cards handed over. Most trades find the answer is none, having been in forty houses and left forty opinions.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose name did the householder send for?

The second man's, and a fortnight afterwards the widow next door sent for him too, on her neighbour's word. Both men did the same work at the same price in the same street. Only one understood that being remembered is not a matter of being memorable, but of being written down where the trouble will send a person looking.

The verse:

The same lead in the wall and the same flame at the bracket,
The same careful hand at the joint and the door.
One left a card in a drawer that was cleared in the springtime,
One left fourpence of brass where the trouble would be.

Until next time. Go and write the six lines you would stamp on a plate, order fifty, and fix the first before you leave the next job.

P.S. The same rule governs paper. Of everything you hand a customer, the only sheet that survives the first tidy is the one with their own thing written on it: their measurements, their settings, the part number that will fail. A sheet about you is filed in the bin. A sheet about them is filed in the house, your name at the top of it for as long as the thing lasts.

Also in the archive: The Yellow Wheels, Ten Days After and The Coal in the Yard.