The Wall Has Moved

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, at a door that has already been mended once, badly, by somebody else.

Two joiners face one botched repair,
Same warped frame, same shoddy care.
One says: whoever did this, shame.
One says: I see, and takes the blame
Off no one, and just starts to plane.
Which joiner did they call again?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two joiners in the town I've never named, and their work, in the old chorus, was equally true. Each was called in the same month to a house where another man had already been, and made a poor job of it, and gone.

The first looked at the frame and said what any honest craftsman would think. Who did this for you? Because that is not how it is done, and whoever hung it has taken your money and left you worse off, and I am afraid you have been had.

Every word true, and every word a small injury to the woman standing beside him.

Because she had chosen that man. She had listened to him, believed him, paid him, and been pleased for a fortnight, and now a stranger in her hallway was explaining, at some length, that her judgement had been poor. She agreed with him, out loud, and disliked him for it quietly, and the whole exchange came to rest on the fact that she had been a fool.

He got the job, since somebody had to do it. He never got another, and she never sent him a name, because nobody recommends the man who is bound up in their memory of a mistake.

The second joiner looked at the same frame and said something much shorter. That is a difficult frame, this one. The wall has moved and it is out by half an inch at the top, and a man working quickly would not have caught it. Here is what I would do.

Notice what that does and does not do. It does not praise the previous work, and it does not lie: the frame really had moved, and a man working quickly really would have missed it. What it does is give the trouble a cause that is not her judgement, so that she can hire the second man without having to agree that she was taken in by the first.

She hired him, and she was easy in his company, because he had left her dignity where he found it. And she recommended him for years afterwards, in the particular way people recommend the person who sorted something out without making them feel small.

And mark this: the second joiner had exactly the same private opinion of the first man's work as his rival did. He simply did not require the customer to share it aloud, in her own hallway, as the price of getting her door fixed.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

You cannot condemn the previous man without condemning the customer who chose him. That is the whole difficulty with a botched job, and almost every trade gets it wrong, because the evidence really is bad and the temptation to say so is enormous and the saying feels like honesty. But there is no version of your verdict that does not also land on the person who signed the cheque, and people do not warm to those who have proved them foolish, however gently or however rightly.

So supply a cause that is not her judgement. The wall had moved. The materials were wrong for that use and it is a common mistake. It was done in the cold, and things done in the cold behave like that. Any of those can be true, and the true one is usually available: most bad work has a real explanation that is not simply the stupidity of the buyer.

Then move to what happens next, quickly, since the past is not what she is paying for. What I would do, what it costs, when I could start. A customer standing in front of a spoiled job wants the subject changed from what went wrong to what happens now, and the tradesman who changes it is a relief rather than a reminder.

Two cautions. Do not go so far as to praise poor work, since that is a lie and she will find it out; there is a plain middle ground between condemning a man and defending him. And keep the same discipline about your rivals in general, which the carrier understood: a trade that speaks ill of other trades is heard as a trade that is worried, and the customer files the whole profession, you included, one notch lower.

Three questions, and think about the last spoiled job you were called to:

1. What did you say in the first minute? If it contained a verdict on the previous man, count how much of the visit afterwards was spent with a customer defending her own decision rather than discussing yours.
2. What is the true cause that is not her fault? There nearly always is one: the wall, the weather, the material, the haste. Find it before you speak, and lead with it.
3. How fast do you get to what happens next? Time yourself. The past should take one sentence, and everything after that belongs to the repair, the price and the date.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which joiner did they call again?

The one who never mentioned the other man. Both saw the same poor work and both formed the same opinion of it, and one of them said his opinion aloud to a woman who had paid for that work, and thereby joined himself for ever to the worst quarter of an hour of her year. The other gave her half an inch of moved wall to blame, mended the door, and left her able to tell the story without the word fool in it anywhere. That is the whole of the difference, and it costs nothing but a sentence held back.

The verse:

Say who did this, and shake your head,
And she will hear: you chose him, though.
Say that the wall has moved instead,
And mend the door, and let it go.

Until next time. Go and decide, before your next spoiled job, the true cause you will name that is not the customer's judgement.

P.S. The same rule governs the customer who arrives having done it themselves and made a mess of it, and there the temptation is stronger still, since the culprit is standing in front of you asking for help. Blame the instructions, blame the tool, blame the fact that nobody tells you about the half inch. Then mend it, take the money, and say nothing that a person would remember with a wince.

Also in the archive: The Carrier Who Charged Half, Most People Ask Me That and The Parted Seam.