Twopence and Half a Mile

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two tinsmiths mended the same kettles, and only one of them was ever paid for his boots.

Two tinsmiths, the same solder, the same irons and the same charcoal,
The same street, and the same twopence for a pinhole in a kettle.
One went wherever he was sent, however small the mending.
One mended small work at his counter, and would not come out under two shillings.
By Michaelmas the second had walked less and taken more.
What was the first man selling that he never once charged for?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two tinsmiths in the town I've never named, a bench in the front room of each, a board over each door offering kettles, cans, lanterns and gutters mended or made new. The same smell in both houses, which is flux and charcoal and hot metal. Their prices were chalked up and they were the same prices. Twopence for a pinhole. Fourpence for a new handle riveted on. Two pounds and upwards for the guttering on a house.

The first tinsmith never refused a call, and was proud of it. A boy at his door at half past eight, sent to say his mother's kettle was weeping at the seam, and the man picked up his bag and went. Half a mile there. Four minutes at the scullery table with the kettle upside down. Half a mile back. Twopence in the apron pocket, and a woman on that street who spoke well of him for years. In one week that autumn, he answered thirty-one such calls, walked eleven miles doing it, took fourteen shillings and eightpence, and did not reach the brewery guttering until Saturday evening, which he finished by lamplight.

The second tinsmith charged the same twopence for the same pinhole. What he had was a line of paint on his shutter, put there in his first year and never taken off. Small mending at the counter, twopence and upwards, while you wait or left in the box by the door. No work at a house under two shillings. He said the same on the doorstep, kindly and without apology, and the boy went home with the kettle under his arm and came back an hour later with a lantern that had wanted mending since Lady Day.

So the second man's week looked different. Four house jobs, gone at properly, nobody's morning broken in half, and between them a counter of small work done in batches while the irons were already hot. He was no cheaper and no quicker with his hands. He simply did his walking once a day instead of nine times, and was never found tired on a two pound job on account of a twopenny one.

Be fair to the first man, because he was neither soft nor foolish. He was generous, he was at your door within the hour, and the town was fond of him. He believed that a small job is the seed of a large one, which is true. He had merely priced the seed at twopence with the walking thrown in, and the town, being reasonable, bought as much walking as he would give.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Every job has two costs: the work, and the coming out to do it. Most trades price the first and give the second away. The work is visible and can be argued about. The coming out is invisible. It is the walk, the knock, the waiting while she finds the thing, the putting down of what you were at, and the twenty minutes afterwards before your head is back where it was. Your customer sees four minutes and a pennyworth of solder, and she is not wrong. She is looking at the only part she was shown.

Nobody in this story behaved badly. A customer who can have your attendance for nothing will ask for it often, and separately, and at the hours that suit her, and so would you. She is answering a price you set. A minimum is not a refusal and it is not a rebuke. It is the coming out, priced once and said out loud, so that it stops being a gift you make thirty-one times a week without noticing. It belongs to the family of the extras nobody prices, and is the costliest of them, being spent in the one currency you cannot make more of.

Then there is the second effect, which is the useful one. A stated floor does not send small work away. It moves it. It teaches a whole town to save jobs up, to bring the thing in, to have the lantern seen to at the same time as the kettle, which suits the customer quite as well as it suits you. You have not become less obliging. You have given people a cheaper door and told them where it is. What is buying your day is a question you answer either deliberately or by default, as I argued in my letter on who is buying your day, and a trade with no floor under it has answered by default, in twopences.

Two cautions. First, a minimum stated in advance is a price, and a minimum produced on the doorstep after the man has walked is a grievance, and the same figure will do either depending on where you put it. Paint it on the shutter, on the price list, on the page, in the second line of the reply. Second, do not set it by what you wish you earned, but by what the interruption actually costs you, and then leave the cheap door standing open. A trade that simply refuses the small and the local is forgotten by the very street it stands in, and does not come to mind on the morning the whole guttering comes down.

Three questions, and the last one is the one most trades have never answered:

1. What did your smallest job last week actually cost you? Not the labour. The whole of it, from the moment you set your work down to the moment your head was properly back on it. Put a figure on that and set it beside what you charged.
2. Where is your counter? There must be a cheap way for small work to reach you that does not pull you out of your day. The thing brought in, the batched hour, the one afternoon a week. Without it, a minimum is only a closed door.
3. Where would a customer learn your minimum before she asks? If the honest answer is that you tell her when she telephones, you have no minimum. You have an awkward conversation you hold over and over instead of writing down once.

The Answer to the Riddle

What was the first man selling that he never once charged for?

His attendance. The walk, the interruption, the afternoon broken into pieces, all of it costing him a great deal more than the solder did. He priced his mending exactly as his rival priced his, and then gave away, thirty-one times in a week, the one thing he had a limited supply of. The second man sold the same mending at the same price, and sold his attendance separately at two shillings.

The verse:

One tinsmith mended thirty kettles, and walked eleven miles,
One tinsmith mended thirty more, and never left his bench.
The first was paid for solder, and threw the walking in,
The second charged the walking, and put his lamp out early.

Until next time. Go and write down the smallest job you will come out for, and the price of it, and put that line where a customer reads it before she asks.

P.S. Of all the ways to raise your takings, this is the one that costs the least goodwill. An ordinary price rise touches every customer you have, the best of them included, and each gets a slightly worse bargain than last year. A minimum touches almost nobody. The householder having a roof done will never meet it, nor will the joiner who sends you a fortnight's work a year. It falls only on the errand that was losing you money, and it falls once, after which that errand arrives in better shape or in better company.

Also in the archive: Six Shillings for a Locking Door, The Innkeeper's Rule and The Thirty Who Pay the Rent.