The Thing He Bought Twice

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man knew his tools because he could see the whole of them at once, hung on the wall above the bench, and a new one cost a day's wage and had to earn its hook. Your century sells tools you cannot see the whole of, and then sells you the same tool twice.

Two blind fitters in your own century, the same vans and the same brackets.
Both bought the same jobs program in the same March, at eleven pounds a month.
Both wanted, by the August, to write to the customers of two winters back.
One signed for a second program to do it, at nine pounds more.
One read what the first program already did, and sent his on the Thursday.
Same trade, same program, same want. Why did one of them pay twice?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is blinds. A steel tape held square inside the reveal and the measurement taken in three places, because no window in an old house is a rectangle. The slats cut on a bench in the back of the van, the brackets up, the chain shortened, the cleat screwed high where a child cannot reach it. Both men bought the same program in the same March, to keep the diary and send the quotes.

The first fitter used it well for what he had bought it for. The diary stopped being a book on the passenger seat and the quotes went out the same evening instead of the Sunday. By the August he had a new want: a letter to the four hundred and ten households fitted two winters back, about thermal linings before the cold came in. He looked for an obvious way to do it, did not find one, and asked in a trade group on his telephone. Buy the mailing program, he was told, everybody uses it. So he did, at nine pounds a month, and spent two evenings moving the names across. Sixty came over wrong.

His letter went out in the September and brought eleven jobs. He did nothing foolish. But he now pays for two programs, keeps his customers in two places, and corrects an address twice or, more often, once.

The second fitter had a Tuesday in the August when a fit was cancelled and the rain came in sideways. He sat in the van with the program open, found its own list of what it does, and read that list end to end with a pencil and a sheet of paper. An hour and forty minutes.

He came out with nine things written down. Three were no use to a man who fits blinds, three he put aside for the winter, three he began that week. The program would send one message to any set of customers he could pick out, and picking out everyone fitted between two dates was four taps. It would put every blind in a house, with its sizes, onto one sheet for the householder. And it would show him every quote he had never chased. Thirty-one.

His letter went out on the Thursday, from the program he already paid for, to a list already in it and already right. Two other things stood on that sheet. He was paying four pounds a month for an addition agreed to in the March and never opened. And the program had been sending his customers a message after every fit, in his name, that he had never read.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The second program is usually bought to do a thing the first one already did, because a tool is sold to you by the trouble it cures and never handed to you as an inventory of itself. You bought a diary. You learned the diary. The rest was there in the March, unmentioned, and it is there now.

This is nobody's fault. No tool is sold by reading out a list of ninety things, because you came in with one trouble and would have listened to nothing else. So the part of a program you know is the part that matched the trouble you had in the week you bought it. Your trade has had new troubles since, and each time you have asked the market, which always has an answer and always charges by the month. The one place you never ask is the thing already on your telephone, because you believe you know what it is. You know what you bought it for, which is a different fact.

And the nine pounds is the least of it. Your customers now live in two places, which makes them worth less than the same customers in one, as the man who kept a ruled book and a program together found out by the second summer. Two lists drift. The address you correct in one is wrong in the other within a month, and in a year you cannot say which is true. The ledger shows nine pounds. The division of your records appears on no bill at all.

Set against that, the hour in the van is the cheapest hour of a trading year. It is paid once, and what you learn about a tool you own is free from then on. It is also the only hour that tells you what you pay for and never use, which runs the other way and quietly takes a wage out of the year. Neither the four pounds nor the message in his name could be found by using the program. Both stood on its own list.

Two cautions. The thing may not be there. Some programs cannot do what you need, and a few do it so poorly that using them is worse than a second subscription. The hour is how you come to decide on the facts rather than on the word of a man who fits a different trade. And do not let the evening become a month. Mastering the program is not your trade. You want one sheet listing what it does, to be read before the market is.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What did I last pay for by the month, and did I ask whether what I own already did it? If you asked a friend, or a group, or nobody, you have the beginnings of your evening.
2. Which of my tools have I never seen the whole of? Begin with the one you pay the most for. It is nearly always the one you know least about.
3. What am I paying extra for and never once used? Not the total of the bill, which you have seen often enough to stop reading. The parts of it. There is usually a line agreed to in a hurry and quietly renewing ever since.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same program, same want. Why did one of them pay twice?

Because the second program was sold to him and the first was only bought. A thing sold to you arrives with its list read aloud. A thing bought in the March sits with the same list unread, so when the August brings a new want you look outside for what is already inside. The second fitter was neither cleverer nor thriftier. He had read what he owned.

The verse:

A tool on a hook is a tool you can see,
A tool on a screen is a guess,
So an hour with the list of all it will do
Is the cheapest hour of the year.

Until next time. Go and open the program you pay the most for, find its own list of what it does, and read that list end to end with a pencil beside you.

P.S. There is a shorter road than the list, and almost nobody takes it. The people who made the program will answer the question can it do this, in writing, free, usually within the day, and would rather you used the thing than left it. Yet a man will pay nine pounds a month for years sooner than ask one question of a stranger.

Also in the archive: The Book He Stopped Writing In, Eleven Small Wages and Still Setting It Up at Christmas.