To the Waterline

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, where the river widened out to the mud and two caulkers were asked the same question about two boats of the same build.

Two caulkers on one slipway, the same oakum and the same pitch kettle.
Two fishing smacks of one build, hauled up the same week, each letting in water.
One told his owner the work would come to somewhere between nine and fifteen pounds.
One told his owner nine pounds ten to the waterline, and a price the foot for planking lifted.
Both found the same rotten garboard, and both sent a bill near sixteen pounds.
Why was one paid on the day and asked for the next boat, and the other argued down to thirteen?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two caulkers, in the town I have never named. Oakum rolled on the knee into a long grey rope, the iron held sideways, the mallet going in a rhythm you could hear from the top of the lane. Either man could make a hull that wept at every seam tight enough to leave dry boots in the bilge.

Two smacks came up in the same February, built in the same yard. Each caulker crawled under his own boat with a candle and a knife, and each found the same thing: the garboard seams gone soft, the oakum black and dead, one plank forward that gave under a thumbnail. Neither could tell how much more planking was rotten until the old stuff was raked out, and both said so.

The first man put it in his price. Somewhere between nine and fifteen pounds, he said, depending what we find when she is open. The owner agreed and walked up the lane with a figure in his head. The figure was nine. It was nine when he told his brother that evening, and nine pounds and a little over that went into the tin on the dresser.

The second man wrote on half a sheet before he touched the boat. Nine pounds ten to rake and caulk the hull to the waterline and two coats of pitch over it. Three shillings the foot for planking that must come out, the feet measured on the slip with the owner beside him before a plank was cut. If it ran past sixty feet, he added, we stop and talk, because at sixty feet you are not mending a boat, you are buying one.

The boats being sisters, both men found the same trouble. Nine planks, forty-two feet in all, had to come out.

The first man's bill came to fifteen pounds twelve, which he had quoted, with three shillings of his range to spare. But the owner had carried nine since February, and what arrived was near double the figure in his tin, from a man who had begun low and ended high. They settled at thirteen after three evenings of it, and the next winter that boat went elsewhere.

The second man's measuring took twenty minutes on a Tuesday. Rule along the plank, chalk at each end, the owner holding the far end of it himself because the paper said he would. Forty-two feet written down, his initials beside it. Six pounds six for the planking, nine pounds ten for the hull, fifteen pounds sixteen in all, and not a shilling of it news. Paid on the Friday, and in the spring his cousin's smack came up on that slip and nobody else was asked.

Four shillings more for the same work, and one of them was thanked for it. The first man was not the dishonest one. He told the truth about what he could not see, and he told it in the wrong place.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A price given as a range is not one price with an honest margin around it, it is two prices, and the customer keeps the lower one. He does not keep it to cheat you. He keeps it because the lower one is the only useful number he has been given.

Consider what he must do with your figure. Decide whether to go ahead, find the money, and tell a wife or a partner or a brother who thinks all tradesmen are the same. None of that can be done with a span, so he will settle it himself, downward, the low end being the end at which the answer can be yes. From that hour you have not quoted nine to fifteen. You have quoted nine, and you are going to bill fifteen.

The sum you then send is identical to the careful man's and is received as a different kind of thing. One is a price. The other is a rise, and a rise must be defended at the moment you are tired, the work is behind you and your leverage is gone. Nor does the span protect you: a sound boat holds you to the bottom, which is what he remembers, and a rotten one is argued toward the middle, the top of your own range having become the ceiling of his patience.

The remedy is not a wider number but a narrower promise. Fix a firm figure to the part of the work you can see. Say where your sight ends, in words a man can picture, which in this trade is the moment the old oakum comes out. Then name the rate beyond it: the unit, its price, who measures, when, and the figure at which the two of you stop and think again. The uncertainty is then neither hidden nor swallowed but moved out of the price and into the scope, which is not at all the same as taking your whole figure apart into labour and materials for him. One named uncertainty, priced by the unit, is the opposite of a dismantled total.

Two things make or break it. The rate must be written before the first stroke of work, because the same three shillings a foot is arithmetic on Monday and opportunism on Thursday, and the trade that learns this late spends its evenings writing the letter that explains why the cost has risen. And the measuring must be joint, since a rate applied out of sight is not a rate but a suspicion with a number attached.

Two cautions. First, the fixed part must cover the ordinary case. Shrink it until nearly everything falls into the variable rate and you have built a range again, with paperwork. Second, name the point at which you stop, as the second man did at sixty feet, which costs you nothing, since you did not want that job past sixty feet either.

Three questions, and the first is one most trades have never put into words:

1. Where does your sight end? In your commonest job, name the moment past which you are guessing: opening the wall, lifting the boards, seeing the accounts. Everything before it can carry a firm figure today.
2. What is the ordinary case, and does your fixed figure cover it? Take your last ten jobs of that kind and find the one in the middle. If the fixed price does not cover that one comfortably, you have priced your best week rather than your work.
3. What is the unit, and who holds the rule? A foot, an hour, a window, a room. Write the unit, the rate, who measures, the day of the measuring and the ceiling. Five lines, and you need never defend a bill after the fact.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was one caulker paid on the day and asked for the next boat, while the other was argued down to thirteen? Because one gave his owner a span and let him choose a number out of it, and the other gave a firm price for the hull he could see, a stated rate for the planking he could not, and a rule to hold at the far end. The bills were within four shillings of one another, and only one was a surprise.

The verse:

Two smacks came up the slipway and both were letting in,
One quoted nine to fifteen pounds, one quoted plank and pin,
The span was heard at its low end and argued down in June,
The rate was chalked upon the oak and paid by Friday noon.

Until next time. Go and take the quotation you send most often and write two lines into it: the firm figure as far as your sight reaches, and the rate a measured unit beyond it.

P.S. The range has a second cost, paid in work you never hear about. The man who has chosen you reads you at your low end, while the man still comparing reads you at your high end, setting your fifteen beside a rival's flat twelve without asking whether the twelve will hold. A range is read at whichever end is worse for you, and it changes ends according to which way the customer happens to be facing.

Also in the archive: The Price Behind the Form, Away in April and Never Once Refused.