Twelve Pounds for Doing Nothing

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a favour done for a good customer was rarely written down, which is why so many of them turned out, years afterwards, to have been sales.

Two carvers and gilders in one town, the same chisels and the same gold leaf.
Both were asked by the largest grocery house to letter no other grocer's front.
One was glad to be asked, said yes, and named no figure.
One said yes, and named a figure, a term and a quarter day.
Same promise, same four shops given up, the same hands and bench.
Which of them still had a trade when the grocery house went quiet?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two carvers and gilders in the town I have never named, five years apart, and the same house asking the same thing of both of them.

The first was a fine cutter of letters, a man who could run a line of serifs across eight feet of signboard so evenly you wanted to put a thumb along it. The grocery house on the market square sent for him one October, sat him down with a glass of something, and said they had been thinking. They would like all their work off his bench, the fascia and the gilt window lettering and the tea canisters. And in return, if he would be so good, they would rather he did not letter for any other grocer in the town.

He said yes before the glass was empty. Their work was better than a third of his year, and he had been asked, which is a pleasant thing in itself. Nobody mentioned money. It would have been awkward to raise over a kindness.

What followed happened slowly, which is how these things get missed. The four other grocers came to him in ones and twos across eighteen months, and he told each, honestly and a little proudly, that he was spoken for in that line. They said never mind, and took their boards to a man in the next town, who in time did their windows too. None of it came back, because none of it was ever angry.

Then the grocery house changed its man in the counting house. The new one was fond of economy and ordered no new boards for three years. The carver's third of a year became a sixth, and he was bound to a house that no longer filled his bench and barred from four that would have been glad to.

Five years on, the same house put the same proposal to the second carver over much the same glass. He neither refused nor agreed, but said he would look at his book and call on the Thursday.

What he did between was arithmetic. He went back three years and totted up every shilling the other grocers in that town had paid him. Thirty-four pounds and some odd pence, call it eleven pounds a year. That was not a favour he was being asked for. It was eleven pounds a year lifted off his counter, with the risk thrown in that the house might thin its orders while he stayed bound.

So on the Thursday he brought a half sheet of paper with four lines on it. Twelve pounds a year, paid by quarters, whether or not a single board was ordered. Thirty pounds of work in the year, or the arrangement lapsed. The restriction to cover grocers inside the town, not the provision shops, not the next town. One year, to be talked of again at Michaelmas on a month's notice either way.

The grocer said that was a great deal of money for doing nothing. The carver agreed it looked so from that side of the counter, and said it was the same money he was being asked to hand over himself, only travelling the other way. They signed. The house used him harder than ever that year, as men do with a thing paid for in advance. And when the lean season came and notice was given at Michaelmas, he went up the market square with his pattern book and had two of the four back before Christmas.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Anything a customer asks you not to do is a thing he is buying from you, and a thing being bought has a price. The first carver was neither foolish nor weak. His instinct, to be useful to the house that paid him most, was sound. His error was narrower. He took a request to restrict his own trade as a compliment rather than an order for goods, and the goods left the shop with no figure on them.

Look at what is transferred. On your side there is a loss, measurable out of your own book: the work in that line you must decline every year the promise holds. On his side there is a gain, and the better half of the bargain, since he gets your hands and the fact that his rivals cannot have them. Neither thing is vague. The only open question is which of you pays, and silence answers it in his favour.

Count it before a word is said about terms. Three years of your own book in that line, divided by three. That is the floor rather than the price, since you must also carry the risk that his orders shrink while your promise does not. Then set it out in four parts, as the second carver did. A sum paid whether or not he orders. A minimum of work to keep the right alive. A scope naming the trade and the district and nothing wider. An end date with notice, because a promise without an end is not a price, it is a sentence. It is the principle we put to you about giving no ground on a rate without something coming back across the counter.

Hearing the request is half the work, since it seldom arrives in the carver's plain words. It comes as we would rather you did not take on anybody in our line, or keep your Thursdays clear this quarter. Each is a restriction, each has a number attached, and if the asking costs him nothing he will ask again next year. Kept time is the plainest case, and we have made it before, in the matter of the morning held open and charged for rather than apologised for.

Charging has a second effect worth having. If your figure makes him decide the arrangement is not worth it, he has told you what you needed to know before you turned four customers away on his account.

Two cautions. Do not sell a restriction wider or longer than you could survive the loss of. Forever is not a term, the whole of your trade is not a scope, and an unwritten promise binds only the honest party, which will be you. And beware the house that offers standing in place of money. You will be the only one we use is not payment, it is a description.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What have I already agreed not to do? The customers you have quietly stopped taking, the trade you leave alone, the day somebody else has the use of. Write beside each what you were paid for it. Most of that column will be empty.
2. What would a year of that refusal cost me? Not a guess. Three years of your book in that line, divided by three, then raised for the risk that he shrinks while you stay bound. You will not hold a figure you invented.
3. What ends it? Every restriction wants four lines: the sum, the minimum, the scope, the date it stops. If you cannot write those four about an arrangement you are in, you are doing it for nothing.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them still had a trade when the grocery house went quiet?

The second. He had been paid every quarter for the shops he was not lettering, so the lean year cost him his largest customer and nothing besides, and his promise ran out at Michaelmas instead of running on. The first handed over four grocers, took a compliment for them, and had neither money nor shops when the orders stopped.

The difference was not nerve. It was that one of them counted the cost of a favour before granting it.

The verse:

He asked me not to serve the rest
and called it friendship's due;
I named the sum, he paid the sum,
and then we both were true.

Until next time. Go and write down the one thing a customer has asked you not to do, and the figure you should have charged for it.

P.S. If the request comes from a customer too new to price, because you do not yet know what his line of trade is worth to you, neither refuse nor agree. Say you will take no work from his rivals until the spring and that you will both look at it again then. By the spring you will have a figure.

Also in the archive: The Millwright's Two Pounds, The Biggest Name in the Book and The Cousin's Gate.