The Tool He Did Not Take Back

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town the man who did one thing better than anybody else was very often the man who did nothing else at all.

Two rope makers in one town, the same hemp and the same three hundred feet of walk.
Both with a lad of fifteen who swept the floor and turned the wheel.
Both could spin a truer yarn than any boy living, and knew it.
One spun every hank of it himself, being quicker and better.
The other let a fortnight of rough yarn go out of his door on purpose.
Only one of them had a different trade by Christmas. Which, and why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two rope makers, in the town I have never named, worked walks of the same length and bought their hemp off the same quay. The hemp is hackled until it falls in a long pale beard, a bundle is wound about the spinner's waist, and he walks backwards down the walk paying it out with a wet hand while a wheel at the far end twists it into yarn. Walk too fast and the yarn comes thin. Pay out unevenly and it comes lumped. It is a thing of the hand and the step, learned by doing it badly for a while. Both men had a lad of fifteen, willing and glad of the place.

The first rope maker spun every yard of his own yarn, and was right to think it the best on that stretch of coast. His lad turned the wheel, carried, tarred and swept. Nine hours of every week the master spent walking backwards with hemp at his waist, because nine hours was what the trade needed and nobody else in the yard could be trusted with it. The quoting and the bills were done at night with a lamp, when they were done at all.

The second rope maker came to the walk on a wet Tuesday in March, wound the hemp about his lad's waist instead of his own, and went and stood at the wheel.

The first hank was thin in two places, and he hung it up where they could both see it. He said one thing only, which was that the backward step was too quick, and sent the boy down the walk again. The next day's yarn was better and still not good. A halter rope went out to a carter rougher than the master liked, and the carter, who wanted a halter and not a ribbon, said nothing about it. Two hanks had to be respun, at a shilling of wasted hemp.

For three weeks the master stood at that wheel watching work he could have done better himself, which is an uncomfortable way to spend a morning. In the fourth he could no longer tell the difference without taking the yarn to the door and turning it in the light. In the fifth he rode out to a farm nine miles off to measure for a well rope, a job he had been letting go for two years for want of a day to spare.

Reckon the cost on the one side. A shilling of hemp, one rough halter, and three weeks of standing about with his hands empty. On the other side, nine hours a week for as long as the boy stayed, which was eleven years.

At the year's end the first man had spun beautifully and taken very nearly what he took the year before. The second had the ship chandler's standing order, eighty fathom a month, because he had been out on the quay to ask for it and had the hours to promise it. Both men still spun. Only one of them had to.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A job you cannot bear to see done less well than you do it is a job you have agreed to do for the rest of your life. It is a bargain signed quietly, usually by a man who believes he is merely keeping his standards up.

Look at how the two sums run. Handing a job over costs you once: a shilling of hemp and a fortnight of rough yarn, and then it stops costing anything at all. Keeping the job costs you every week you trade, and it never stops. Any price paid once beats any price paid weekly, given enough weeks, and you intend to have a great many weeks. It only looks a close thing because the fortnight is in front of you and the eleven years are not.

The second difficulty is that your standard and the standard being bought are rarely the same. The carter wanted a halter that would hold a horse. The thin place the first rope maker would have sat up to correct was invisible to every person who ever paid him for rope. You will defend handing a job over by saying the customer will not notice, and feel shabby saying it. Do not. His not noticing is the proof that you have been buying something nobody asked for with hours wanted elsewhere. It is the work a customer can count on beating your best, turned inward.

Then there is the matter of taking it back. The third morning is when the hand reaches for the hemp, because the hank in front of you is poor and you are quicker. Reach out and you have taught the lad that the job is lent rather than given, and he will attend to it as a man attends to a tool he is only holding. You will have paid the whole cost of handing over and bought none of the benefit. So give it away with a date on it. Four weeks, and inside those four weeks it is his, however it comes out.

Notice why the second man could hand anything over at all. He could say what he wanted in one sentence. Slower on the backward step. A job you have done a thousand times and never once described is a job you cannot give to anybody, which is why the trader who does everything himself finds, when he tries, that he has nothing to hand over but a mystery. Writing the trade down so another pair of hands can take it is best done while you are still the one doing the work.

Two cautions. Hand over the job that repeats and can be put right, not the one that cannot be walked back. Yarn can be respun and a rough halter is only a rough halter. A price quoted wrongly to a good customer, a promise about a date, a letter sent in your name to the whole of your trade: these are not fortnight experiments. The second is that standing back is not walking away. The master was at that wheel every one of those mornings, watching the yarn come off. Pick the hour you will inspect, and say one thing at a time about the work rather than about the person holding it.

The Answer to the Riddle

Only one of them had a different trade by Christmas. Which, and why?

The second, because he bought a permanent change with a temporary loss, which is the only sort of bargain that compounds. The first kept his standard on one job and paid for it with every other job in the firm, including those that would have grown it. Decide which of your tasks you keep because the work needs you, and which you keep because you cannot stand to watch them done at nine-tenths.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which job did I do most often last week? Not the most important one. The one that came round most, and that a careful person would have the shape of in a fortnight.
2. What actually happens if it is done at nine-tenths of my standard? Put a figure on it in money and in customers, not in pride. If the honest answer is a shilling of wasted stock and a rougher halter, you have your decision.
3. When will I look at it, and what will I say? Name the day and the hour before you hand anything over, and make one correction at a time. A sentence a week is slower than doing the job yourself for a month and faster than doing it for a decade.

The verse:

The yarn he spun was even and the finest on the coast,
And spinning it was all he did, which cost him rather most.
Give out the work that comes around and bear a rougher week,
For hands that only hold a thing will never learn the trick.

Until next time. Go and name the one job you did most often last week, show it once today to the person who is to take it, and write down a date four weeks off before which you will not take it back.

P.S. The same test works on the trades you buy in. If you keep a task because no supplier would do it as well as you, ask what a customer would pay for your version rather than theirs. Where the answer is nothing, you have found another fortnight worth suffering.

Also in the archive: Settled in February, The Trough Across the Yard and The Potter Who Made Fewer Things.