The Wardrobe on the Stairs

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a trade was handed on by standing a boy at your elbow until he could do the thing without you. This one borrows your century, where much of the trade has moved onto a screen that one man alone ever touches.

Two furniture removers in one town, the same lorry and the same blankets.
Both kept the jobs, the quotes and the invoices in one program on one laptop.
Both had set it up themselves, and both were the only man who could work it.
One spent a wet Wednesday writing nine steps on one side of paper.
Same program thereafter, same two men apiece, same lorry at the kerb.
Which of the two could lose a Tuesday and not lose the work?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two furniture removers in the town I have never named, though this one has a ring road in it and a laptop on the kitchen table. Two men and a lorry apiece, the second man in each firm a good hand with a piano and a staircase. Both bought the same program in the same January, the sort that holds the diary, the quotes and the invoices together.

The first kept it to himself, and had a reason: the program held the bank details, and he had once watched a man he employed empty a column by accident. Anything on the screen came through him.

Then a Tuesday in June. A mahogany wardrobe in a back bedroom, which had to come down a turn in the staircase past a newel post nobody had considered in 1931. Four hours, two blankets ruined, his telephone in the cab. Four enquiries arrived in those four hours, two taken by the second man on a delivery note, since he could neither see the diary nor price a job. At twenty past nine that evening the first remover sent all four quotes. Two had booked elsewhere, and one wrote back pleasantly to say they had gone with a firm that answered in the morning.

The summer went on in that fashion, and in August he took his one week away, during which the firm quoted nothing at all.

The second remover went the same way until the wet Wednesday. Nothing to lift, rain on the yard. He sat at the kitchen table with an enquiry that had come that morning and the second man beside him, made the quote, which took nine minutes, and wrote down what he did while he did it. Not afterwards. While.

What came out was dull and slightly embarrassing. The button is grey and sits at the top right, which is why you have never seen it. The thing you want is not called a quote in there, it is called a job. The rate goes in the second box, and the first box is the one that looks right. Nine steps, one side of paper.

The next morning another enquiry came in. He gave the second man the paper and the laptop, sat on his hands and said nothing for twenty minutes, which he afterwards called the hardest work of that week. The man halted twice, and both halts were faults in the paper: step four did not say which address went in which box, and step seven assumed you knew the house was a three bedroom. He mended both lines that evening, and the next quote took eleven minutes with the man working alone. By October four such sheets hung in a wallet behind the kitchen door, and that firm answered within the hour, by whichever of the two was nearest a seat.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A program only one person can work has not been bought by your firm, it has been bought by that person, and the firm hires it back from him whenever he happens to be free. The hire is paid in evenings and in delay, which is why it appears nowhere you would look.

Begin with how the knowing came to sit in one head, since it was never decided. Whoever sets a tool up serves an apprenticeship in it without noticing, and every fumble teaches where a thing is kept and what it is called there. Everyone else is handed the finished article with no handles on it. Nobody chooses to become the narrow part of his own firm, which is why so many are.

Notice next where that knowing is not. It is not in the program, which shows your prices to anybody with a password but holds nowhere the order of the nine things, nor the grey button, nor the box that lies. It is the same want that makes your programs count everything that happens to you and record nothing that you do. The firm owns the particulars; one man owns the method.

Now the usual remedy, which is to show him, and which fails. You work at your own speed, he watches a thing done well, and all he learns is that it can be done. What he lacks is not understanding but the order, the names, and the three places where nothing on the screen tells you what comes next, and those you stopped seeing in February. They come back only in the doing, which is why the writing must be done with your hands on the keys. It is the rule about doing a thing by hand before giving it to a machine turned about: only work you can still watch yourself doing is fit to hand on.

Then the silence, which matters more than the paper. You are testing the sheet and not the man, and every place he halts is a line you wrote badly. Supply the missing word and you have repaired that morning, left the sheet broken, and earned the same question next Tuesday, whereupon you conclude that he cannot learn. He learned. Your paper did not teach.

Two cautions. Do not set out to write the manual: a full account of everything your program does is never finished and is read by nobody. Write the one task you are asked about most, and let the next wait a month. And teaching is not handing over the keys: give the instruction widely and the permissions narrowly, since the second man wants to send a quote and not to see the bank page.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What are you asked to do on the screen most often? Keep a mark on an envelope for a week, one for each interruption. The task with the most marks is the one to write down, and no other.
2. What stops on a day you cannot get to it? Not what would fail in a year. What stops by Thursday. That list is the whole length of the work, and shorter than you fear.
3. Who halted, and at which line? A sheet is finished not when you have written it, but the first time somebody else works through it with you out of the room.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of the two could lose a Tuesday and not lose the work?

The second, and the difference was nine steps on one side of paper, written while the work was being done and tested by a man who sat on his hands for twenty minutes. Both knew their program equally well. Only one had put what he knew where the firm could reach it without him.

The verse:

The first man kept it in his head
and sent his quotes at night;
the second wrote nine steps down
and answered in the light.

Until next time. Go and write down, while you are doing it, the one thing on your screen that other people keep asking you to do for them.

P.S. Let the other man hold the pen while you work. He will write it clumsily and better, because he puts down what you have stopped being able to see, and because a sheet in his own hand is one he will trust when you are twelve miles off.

Also in the archive: Still Setting It Up at Christmas, The Thing He Bought Twice and The One Name He Never Cut.