Two Days Without a Bed

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two makers of mattresses, and the difference lay in neither the wool nor the price, but in which of their customers each thought worth questioning.

Two mattress makers in the town I have never named, the same wool, the same ticking, the same twelve shillings and sixpence to make a bed over.
One asked the householders who had gone elsewhere why they went, and was told, almost every time, that it was the money.
One asked the householders who had paid him what nearly stopped them, and was told three other things.
Both believed what they heard and both acted on it inside the year.
By spring one had dropped his price twice, the other had not moved a farthing, and the second was the busier.
Same wool, same ticking, same twelve and six. Which of them asked the better question?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Making over a mattress is honest, dusty work. The ticking is unpicked down one side, the old wool comes out in matted slabs and is teased open by hand until it will take air again, then laid back even and stitched with a long curved needle. Both men could do it properly, and both charged twelve shillings and sixpence to take a mattress away on a handcart and carry it back up the stairs. Neither had enough work.

The first man sensibly went after the jobs he had lost. When an enquiry came to nothing he sent a short civil note, or asked in the street if he met the householder. Nearly every answer was the same. It was the money. It was dearer than they had looked for. So in the spring he came down to eleven shillings and by harvest to ten. He did the same four or five beds a week and took eighteen shillings a week less for them. He was neither idle nor a fool. He was answering, faithfully and at his own expense, the only question he had thought to ask, of the only people he supposed had anything to tell him.

The second man asked a different set of people. On the second evening, with the mattress back on the bedstead, the money in his pocket and his hand on the door, he asked one question. Before you gave me the work, what nearly stopped you? Then he shut his mouth, let the householder talk, and wrote the answer that night in a penny book, in her words. Nineteen answers by Michaelmas, and three sentences kept coming back.

One was that they had expected to be without a bed for a fortnight. One was that she did not know whether the old wool was worth keeping, and suspected she would be paying to have the same dirt sewn into a clean cover. One was that she feared what he would say once he had it open on the bench.

Not a word about the price. So he changed three things, and the price was not among them. He said the days out loud at the first asking, away Tuesday morning and back Thursday evening, and kept a made-up mattress of his own to leave in the room meanwhile. He took to unpicking four inches of the seam on the doorstep and holding the wool out in the daylight to be looked at and smelled, saying plainly when it was past saving, which cost him three jobs that year and bought him something better. And at the foot of his estimate he named the one condition under which the figure could move, undertaking to come back and say so before doing an hour of the work.

By spring he was doing seven and eight beds a week at twelve and six. Note that the householders who went elsewhere had not lied. The money is the easiest true-sounding sentence in the language, and what any decent person reaches for who wishes to end a conversation without giving offence.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The people who did not buy from you cannot tell you why, and the people who did buy can, because they are the only ones who went the whole way through the doubt and are still willing to stand in your doorway and describe it. A householder who has decided against you owes you nothing and gains nothing by candour. He has one answer that is polite, final and impossible to argue with, and he uses it, which is why almost nobody who objects to your price is objecting to your price. The customer who has just paid you is in the opposite position. He is warm, he is pleased with the thing you carried up his stairs, and his doubt is a fortnight old at most, so he can still say where it sat.

The step most owners will not take on trust is the next one. The doubt of the man who bought is the doubt of the man who vanished. Buyers are not a separate species with milder fears. They are the ones whose fear happened to get answered, often by accident, by something you said in passing and never thought to say again. So nineteen hesitations from people who paid you are the nearest thing you will hold to a record of what the silent ones were thinking, and they come in the customer's own words, which are the words the next one is using to himself. Lost enquiries are worth keeping too, but as dates rather than as reasons.

Two cautions. The first is to ask about the hesitation and never about yourself. Were you happy with it buys a compliment and no information, and the compliment is worse than nothing because it feels like progress. Nor should you answer what you hear: begin explaining why the fear was groundless and you teach that customer to stop. Write it down, say thank you, and go. The second is to wait for the third repetition. One answer is a quirk and two a coincidence, and some fears are to be answered honestly rather than removed, since a doubt you quiet with a promise you cannot keep returns as a complaint, with interest.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What nearly stopped you? Ask it of the last five customers who paid you, at the end of the work and not the beginning, and keep their words rather than your summary.
2. Which hesitation do I know of and have never answered anywhere? Most owners can name one before they ask a soul. Decide where the answer belongs: the first reply, the estimate, or the visit.
3. Does my answer arrive before the customer has to ask? A fear you settle once it is spoken has already cost you everyone too polite to speak it.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same wool, same ticking, same twelve and six. Which of them asked the better question?

The second, because he asked people who had reason to answer him. The first collected the sentence a man offers when he is being let off a conversation, mistook it for the cause, and paid two and sixpence a bed for the mistake. The second collected three fears, none of them the money, and answered them at no cost beyond saying earlier what he was always willing to say.

The verse:

The man who walked away from you will tell you it was price,
He owes you nothing further and he says the civil thing,
The man who paid you Thursday night will tell you what he feared,
And what he feared on Tuesday is the whole of what you sell.

Until next time. Go and ask the last customer who paid you what nearly stopped them, and write the answer down in their own words.

P.S. The question works on customers of long standing, if you have the nerve for it. Ask one what he would need to be sure of before he let you do the other thing you do. You will hear a condition you could have met for years and were never told of.

Also in the archive: One Pot in Seven, Eight to Twelve Hundred and The Crossings-Out.