The Two Nights in the Parlour

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there was a narrow house with a rotten staircase in it, and two joiners who came to see it on one Tuesday.

Two joiners in the town I have never named, the same deal and the same hand-cut strings.
Both built a sound stair, charged within a shilling, and kept the day they named.
One left his estimate on the hall table and trusted his good name for the rest.
The other sat down and wrote out what each day would be like.
By Friday one had the work and the other a polite note, his figure the lower.
Same trade, same stair, same price. How?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two joiners, then, in the town I have never named. Both had served seven years, bought their deal off the same yard, and told the householder honestly that the stair must come out whole. The damp had been in the bottom risers for years and the rot had gone up inside the string. Neither man offered a patch.

The first came at nine and did the thing properly. He tapped the treads, got under the stair with a candle, and let her put her own thumbnail into the soft string. He said three days, that his men were clean workers, and that she would hardly know they had been. He wrote eleven pounds twelve on a sheet of his own paper, left it on the hall table, and went.

The second came at two and examined the same things. Then he asked to sit at the kitchen table a quarter of an hour, and wrote out in a readable hand what the days would consist of.

Monday the cart comes at eight and the old stair is in the yard by eleven. From then until six on Wednesday evening there is no way up to the bedrooms at all, so bring down on Sunday night what two bedrooms need for two nights, and the airing cupboard with them, since the landing goes as well. Sleep in the parlour, which we have no call to go into. Monday before eleven is the dirty hour of the job and the dust gets into the hall whatever we hang over the door. Tuesday is the loud day, strings cut in the yard and the carriage put together in the hall, and no part of it quiet before four. Wednesday is nailing and wedging, and by six you can walk up, bare, with no handrail. Thursday is one man and a rail, leaned on by nobody for two days after. Two things wanted from you: the pattern of the rail by Monday first thing, and whether the treads are bare or covered, by Tuesday noon.

Underneath he put eleven pounds fourteen.

She took the second man, the dearer by two shillings and the slower by a day. She told her sister she had chosen the one who had done it before, which was the one thing she had wrong: the first man had built ninety staircases to the second man's seventy.

Be fair to the first joiner. He would have hung a sheet over the hall door, told her on the Monday to get the bedding down, and warned her off the fresh rail. He had done all of it on every job for eleven years. He had simply built ninety staircases and forgotten that she had built none. To him the week was too obvious to say. To her it was the whole of what she was buying.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your customer is not comparing two finished jobs, which you have both promised and neither can show her, but two versions of the week she must live through, and only one of you has described it. She cannot judge a housed tread. She can judge two nights in the parlour, whether you mention them or not.

She pays in five currencies and not one: money, time, her own trouble, the nuisance of having you about the place, and the risk of having chosen the wrong man. A lower figure improves one of the five. A written week improves three, and costs a quarter of an hour at a kitchen table.

A described disruption is smaller than an undescribed one, because an undescribed one has no edges and she fills it in herself, always badly. Told three days, she imagines the dirty hour lasting all three, having nothing else to imagine with. Told the dirt is Monday before eleven and the noise Tuesday before four, she has two troubles of known size and a plan for each, and the job has shrunk without one thing about it changing. It also moves labour off her onto you, which is the trouble you take away before the work begins.

Last and most valuable, the description proves what no claim can. Any man may say he is experienced. Only one who has lived the job seventy times knows that Tuesday is the loud day and that the dust gets into the hall whatever you hang up. The particulars are the evidence, of a kind nobody can manufacture who has not got them. She does not read your week and think, here is a thorough fellow. She thinks, this has happened to this man many times over, and her two shillings bought the removal of her own doubt.

It pays again once started. The householder told Monday would be dirty sees the dirt and thinks, he said that. The one promised she would hardly know they had been thinks worse of him for the same dust, which is how a written week disarms the weeks a decided customer spends fretting.

Two cautions. Do not write the week to make it sound like nothing, because then you have manufactured a promise and will be measured against it by somebody standing in her hall with a duster. Name the worst morning as the worst morning: the exactness is the whole asset. And do not let it swell into a document. One side, in days, in the order the days come.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What does my customer live through while I am there, hour by hour? Write out the days of the job you are on now, dirt and noise and all. If it takes above ten minutes you do not know your own work as well as you suppose.
2. What do I need from her, and when do I presently ask for it? Every decision you spring on somebody at eight in the morning belongs in your estimate as a dated line. Most trades find four or five.
3. Which is the worst hour of my job? Whichever hour you quietly hope the customer will be out for is the one to put in writing.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same stair, same price, and by Friday one had the work and the other a polite note, his figure the lower. How?

Because the first sold a finished staircase, which both offered and neither could show her, and the second sold the four days she would have to live in. She did not pay two shillings for better joinery. She paid them to know where she would sleep on Tuesday night.

The verse:

Two joiners quote the self-same stair, the figures near as one,
But one has told her Monday's dust and Tuesday's hammering.
The finished work she cannot judge, the week she judges whole,
So write the week out day by day and let your price stand still.

Until next time. Go and write out, in days and in order, what your next job will be like for the person who must live in it, and send that with your price.

P.S. If your trade makes no dust, because the thing is built in your shop and delivered finished, the week still exists undescribed. It is the waiting. A customer told that nothing happens until the eleventh, and that you will write on the fourth whether there is news or not, waits in comfort. One told six weeks counts them.

Also in the archive: The Coal in the Yard, Sheets in Four Hallways and The Fourteen-Page Proposal.