The Smear on the Hall Paint

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the customer in it will never see the thing she is paying for.

Two firms do work behind the wall,
Same pipes, same joints, same standard all.
One's van is clean, one's boots come off,
One's ten past nine and smells of oil.
The hidden work is equal. Then
Why does she swear one's better made?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. And in this trade, as in most, the work happens where the customer cannot see it: behind a wall, under a floor, inside a machine, in a file she will never open.

The first firm did excellent work and thought that sufficient. The van was a working van and looked it. The man arrived at ten past nine for nine, with a reason. He came in with his boots on because he was going straight to the job, and left a smear on the hall paint that he did not notice, and the invoice arrived a fortnight later on a page torn from a pad.

Behind the wall, the work was faultless. The customer never saw behind the wall.

What she saw was the van, the ten minutes, the boots, the smear and the torn page, and from those she formed a view of what the pipework was probably like, since those were the only evidence available to her. She did not think she was doing this. She would have told you she was judging the work, and she was: the only work she could see.

Two years later, when a joint failed for reasons that had nothing to do with him, she was not surprised, and told people she had always had a feeling about it.

The second firm did the same work behind the wall, and understood what the customer would actually be looking at.

The van was washed on Fridays, which took twenty minutes. He arrived at five to nine. His boots came off at the door without being asked, and a sheet went down before a tool came out. When the job was done he showed her a photograph of the finished work behind the wall, since she would never see it otherwise, and explained one thing about it in plain words. The invoice arrived the same evening, typed, with the photograph attached.

None of that changed the pipework. All of it changed what she believed about the pipework, and what she believed was correct, so no harm was done by the believing. She told people he was meticulous, and she had never seen the thing he was meticulous about.

And here is the part worth pausing on. Both firms were equally meticulous behind the wall. Only one of them had allowed the customer any way of knowing it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The customer cannot judge the work, so she judges everything around it, and she is right to. That is not shallowness. A person who cannot see behind the wall has to form a view somehow, and the sensible way to do it is to look at what the same hands did where she could see them. A man careless with her hall paint is, on the balance of probabilities, careless with her joints. Usually she is wrong about you in particular and right about the trade in general, which is no comfort at all.

So the visible things are not extras and they are not manners. They are the only evidence you will ever submit, and they are judged as evidence. The van, the time, the boots, the sheet, the invoice, the reply to the message, the way the tools are laid out. Every one of them is answering the question she cannot ask, which is what is he like when I am not looking, and the answer she arrives at will attach itself permanently to work she never sees.

Which means two things are worth doing that most trades skip. Attend to the visible with the same care as the invisible, and do it as a matter of routine rather than performance: the Friday wash, the five to nine, the sheet before the tool. And show the hidden work before you close it up, in a photograph with one sentence of explanation, since a thing the customer has seen becomes a thing she can vouch for, and a thing she has merely been told about remains a claim, as the glazier would remind you.

The caution is the obvious one, and it matters. The visible cues are a proxy, and proxies can be faked: a clean van in front of bad pipework is a fraud that works once. This letter is not an invitation to polish the surface of poor work. It is a warning that excellent work behind a wall is invisible until you arrange for it to be seen, and that in the meantime you are being judged on your boots, and the judgement will be treated as a fact about your joints.

Three questions, and walk through your last job as the customer:

1. What did she actually see? List it: the arrival, the vehicle, the floor, the tools, the paperwork, the messages. That list is the whole of the evidence she has, and every item on it is being read as a statement about the work she cannot see.
2. Where does the visible contradict the invisible? Find the place where your care behind the wall is undone by something in front of it. It is usually one thing, and it is usually small, and it costs you the credit for everything else.
3. How does she ever see behind the wall? If the answer is never, she is guessing, and you are letting her. One photograph and one sentence before it is closed up, and the guess becomes knowledge.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why does she swear one is better made?

Because she saw a clean van, a man at five to nine, boots at the door and a photograph of the joint, and from those she reasoned, sensibly, about the pipework. The other man gave her a smear on the hall paint and a torn page and asked her to trust what was behind the wall. She could not see behind the wall. Nobody can. So she looked at the paint, which is what any of us would have done, and drew her conclusion, and carried it for years.

The verse:

The joint is hid, and none can tell,
So she must read what she can see:
The van, the boots, the sheet, the bell.
Make what she sees say what you are.

Until next time. Go and list what your last customer actually saw, and find the one thing on that list that contradicts the work.

P.S. The same rule governs the trades with no van: the reply that arrives with a spelling mistake, the file with an old date on it, the invoice with the wrong name. Each is a smear on the hall paint, and each is read as a fact about the work in the file, which the customer will never open and will never need to, having already made up her mind.

Also in the archive: The Name Above the Door, The Glazier's Hammer and The Yellow Wheels.