Two Fires a Week

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, work often could not begin until something had been brought up to heat, and a fire takes its hour from you whether you give it one horn or forty.

Two comb makers in one town, the same ox horn and the same hot plates, fourteen pence a dozen.
Both had a hearth that wanted an hour of coal before a horn would soften.
One lit it whenever an order came in, and worked that order through.
The other lit it on two mornings, and opened every horn he had.
Both got their combs out inside the week.
Which of the two kept his customers waiting?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two comb makers in the town I have never named, both in the lane behind the shambles. The same ox horn, the same cauldron, the same iron plates and screw press, fourteen pence a dozen at either door.

The trade comes in two halves. A horn is sawn into rings and split, and the rings go into water over the fire until they soften like wet leather, when each is opened out between two hot plates and screwed down to cool flat. Everything after is cold work: blanks sawn, teeth cut with a fine double saw, the whole polished on a wheel. The hot half wants a fire, an hour of bringing it up, and a man standing by it. The cold half wants a vice and patience.

The first comb maker worked the way the orders arrived, which most sensible men take to be the same thing as working hard. On the Tuesday a dealer sent in for three dozen, so he raked out the ash, laid his kindling, waited the hour for the water to move, pressed what the order wanted and cut teeth all afternoon. On the Thursday a pedlar came by for two dozen, so he lit the fire again. On the Saturday a draper's wife wanted one fine comb for a wedding, and he lit it for that too, for one horn, and stood an hour beside it with his hands in his pockets. Two hundred and fifty fires in the year, and he was never idle and never quick.

The second did the same work in a different order. By his door stood a bin, and every horn that came in was sawn and split into it the same hour, that much being five minutes of cold work. He lit his fire on Monday morning and Thursday morning and at no other time, and on those mornings he pressed every ring in the bin, the dealer's three dozen and the pedlar's two and a dozen more nobody had asked for yet. The flat plates went on a shelf above the bench, where pressed horn keeps as long as you please.

The rest of his week was a cold bench. He cut teeth in the quarter hour before dinner and the half hour after it, and could break off to serve a customer without losing his place. A hundred and four fires in the year, and a hundred and fifty hours beside a cauldron never spent, which is a month of working days got back out of nothing but the order of the work.

Then came the part neither had reckoned on. In the November a housekeeper came in at ten in the morning wanting a comb for that evening, and by five it was in her hand, cut from a plate off the shelf. She had tried the other shop first and been told Thursday, because Thursday was when the fire would next be lit. The man who worked in runs was the one who never made anybody wait.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Every stage of your work has a price for being begun, and you pay that price as many times as you begin. The price is an hour of coal, or the ladder up and the sheets down, or the quarter hour it takes to find the place where you left a thing off. Begin the stage once and you pay once. Begin it five times and you have paid five times, and no page in your book will tell you so.

That is why the cost hides. A price for beginning belongs to no single job, so it is charged to whichever job happened to need it, and there it looks like nothing much. The Saturday fire for one wedding comb did not look like a wasted hour. It looked like prompt service. The man who counts his own half hours for a fortnight is usually astonished how much of his week goes on getting ready, and the remedy is almost never to get ready faster. It is to get ready fewer times. Sort your week by what each stage costs to begin rather than by the day the order came in. Heavy beginnings are gathered into runs and done on named mornings, ahead of need. Light beginnings are left loose, to be done singly, as asked.

Mind the distinction that makes this safe, since I have said plainly before that eleven jobs begun and none finished pay you nothing. A shelf of pressed horn is not that. It is one stage finished for everybody, promised to no customer, wanted by every order that can come through the door. The test is whether what you hold will serve the next order whatever it proves to be. If it will not, it is no stock but an unfinished job.

Notice too which half he gathered up. He put the stage the customer never sees into runs and kept the stage the customer does see loose and quick. Had he done the reverse, holding finished orders back to send them out together on a Friday, he would have saved a little walking and made every person wait. Batch the getting ready. Never batch the handing over.

Two cautions. A run only pays where the beginning is large against the job, so leave alone work whose setting up costs two minutes. And a named morning must have a door in it, since a rule that holds a good customer three days to save an hour is a poor bargain. Light the fire out of turn when the job deserves it, knowing as you do so what the hour cost, which is a different thing from not knowing.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What in my trade cannot start until something is got ready? Name the stage and the hour it takes. Heat, travel, loading, setting out, opening the books, getting properly into a difficult piece of writing.
2. How many times did I begin it last week, and how many need I have? Count from the day book rather than from memory, because memory counts jobs and never counts beginnings.
3. Which stage keeps? Find the one whose output serves any order rather than one order, do a run of it on a named morning and put it on a shelf.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of the two kept his customers waiting?

The first, and not by a little. Both got their combs out inside the week. But the first could begin nothing until a fire had been lit, so his customers waited on his coal, while the second waited on nothing but his own hands. What he put into a run was the part nobody was waiting for.

The verse:

The fire will want its hour of coal
for one horn or for ten;
so gather up the lot of them,
and do not light again.

Until next time. Go and write down the one stage of your work that costs you an hour before it earns a penny, then count how many times you began it last week.

P.S. The shelf was worth more to that man than all the coal he saved. A little stock of one finished stage is the cheapest speed you will ever buy. Keep a fortnight of it done ahead and you have bought the power to say this evening where your neighbour says Thursday.

Also in the archive: The Trough Across the Yard, The Hour Nobody Claimed and One Pit of Lime.