Thirty-Two and a Full Load

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, a price was a figure painted on a board, and a painted figure has no opinion about what happens when a man in a hurry leans on it.

Two brickmakers in one town, the same clay and the same kilns, thirty-four shillings a thousand.
Both left the gate to a foreman, and both were asked most weeks what could be done on the price.
One told his foreman to use his judgement and keep the carts moving.
The other wrote the lowest figure inside the office door, and what must come back for it.
In October both gates still said thirty-four shillings.
Which of the two had been paid it?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two brickyards in the town I have never named, a mile apart on the same seam of clay. The same pug mill, the same moulders, the same common stocks, and thirty-four shillings a thousand painted up at both gates. Neither master stood at his own gate, so both had a foreman there with a tally board, and both got the same question five days a week. What can you do for me on four thousand, cash, taken Tuesday.

The first master gave his foreman the instruction every reasonable man gives. Use your judgement, do not lose me a cart over a shilling. So he used his judgement, which is to say he answered the question in the only circumstances in which it is ever asked, with a loaded waggon in the gateway and the next cart behind. In March he knocked a shilling off for the men he knew. By June it was eighteen pence to anybody who asked twice. In August a stranger got two and six. He was doing as he had been told.

That yard sold six hundred and twenty thousand bricks and gave away, by the tally sheets, two and sixpence a thousand. Seventy-seven pounds ten, found out in February with the ledger open. The master could not tell you the week it began, because it had not begun in any week. It got in the way water gets into a cellar.

The second master did a duller thing, on a wet Sunday before the season opened. He wrote nine lines on a board and nailed it inside the office door, where his foreman hung his coat. The price is thirty-four. Thirty-two for ten thousand or more inside the week, or for cash on the day of loading. Thirty-three for a load that waits on our convenience and goes out on a Monday. Nothing below thirty-two by anybody at this gate, and if a man presses, here are the words. That is past what I am allowed. I will put it to the master tonight and send word in the morning.

What happened next happened to the asking rather than the price. The builders tried it on in April, and found the answer the same on a Tuesday as on a Friday, the same from the foreman as from the master, and the same for a twenty-year account as for a stranger. By midsummer they had stopped asking what could be done and begun asking what the ten thousand figure was, which is a different question with a different answer in it. That yard gave away twenty pounds all season, every shilling of it against full loads, cash, or slack Mondays when the kiln stood idle anyway.

Same clay, same kilns. Fifty-seven pounds between them, and not one shilling of it decided by a master.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A price is not a number, it is a rule about what happens when somebody pushes on it. Until the rule is written down you have an opening figure and not a price, and the figure that governs your year is whatever a tired person says at the gate on a Friday afternoon.

Begin with why that is the worst moment in the week to decide anything. The cost of holding your price is vivid and personal, a face going hard in front of you and a cart that may turn round, all of it inside four seconds. The cost of giving way is eighteen pence a thousand, arriving in February on a page, spread so thin that no load was ever worth defending. Put those two costs to a decent person two hundred times in a season and the small invisible loss wins every time. That is not weak character but the arithmetic of the moment being wrong, and it would be wrong for you as it was for him.

So move the decision to an hour when the arithmetic is right. A wet Sunday, a ledger, nobody waiting. The second master was not braver, only earlier. Decide in cold blood what you will take and what must come back for it, and the gate stops being where prices are made and becomes where a decision already made is reported, which a lad of eighteen does as well as you. If you work alone, you are your own man at the gate, so write the floor anyway.

Notice what a rule does to a concession. Money given away to end an awkward silence buys nothing, and teaches the customer that pressing works, which he will remember for the rest of your trading life. A reduction set against a quantity, a payment, or a day that suits your kiln is bought with something you wanted, and the exchange is the whole difference. Seventy-seven pounds of accident bought the first yard nothing, while twenty on purpose bought the second full loads and cash, and a shilling off the thousand is never small once multiplied by a season.

Two cautions. A floor is not a wall, and a rule with no door in it will cost you the odd good job that wanted a shape you had not foreseen, so name the one person who may go beneath it, make that person yourself, and put a night between the asking and the answer. And do not set the floor by feel. It is the figure below which the work stops paying for your unpaid days, your tools and your waiting.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What is the lowest figure anybody here may name this month? If it is not written where whoever answers the telephone can read it, the figure is whatever they feel like on the day, and they will feel like keeping the peace.
2. What must come back for each step down? Quantity, cash on the day, a date that suits you. Write the step and the thing beside it, so a reduction is bought and not had.
3. What are the words of the person who may not decide? A rule holds only if there is something easy to say when it is tested, and it should come out as a fact rather than a refusal.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of the two had been paid his thirty-four shillings?

The second, near enough, and the first hardly ever. Both boards said the same thing all season, but a painted figure is only a wish about money. The price you charge is the one your rule allows when you are not in the room, and the first master wrote no rule, so he never learned his price until the year was spent.

The verse:

A price is not the figure
that you paint up for the town;
it is the word your gateman says
when asked how far you come down.

Until next time. Go and write down the lowest figure anybody in your business may name this month, and what must come back for it.

P.S. Of those nine lines, the one that earned most was the last, because it was the only one that told a man what to say. A rule which fixes a limit and leaves the wording to whoever stands in the gateway has kept the easy half of the job. Write the sentence out, then hear it aloud until it comes flat and friendly, like the price of coal.

Also in the archive: Made for a Colder Winter, The Good Iron on the Axle and The Prices Nobody Argued With.