While You're Here

Dear friend,

The riddle first. Your century again, and today's lesson concerns four words that have taken more money out of small trades than any recession: while you're here, could you.

Two fitters price the self-same job,
Both hear the small requests that rob.
One says of course and swallows more,
One writes it down and names the score.
By close, one's short, one's fairly paid.
Who bought the extras? Who was made?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two fitters, one town, and the work, in the old chorus, was equally good. Both quoted the same job properly: three weeks, a fair price, everything written down.

In the first week, the customer asked the first fitter whether, while he was there, he might just take a look at the airing cupboard door. Ten minutes. He did it gladly, and it was gladly done, and there is nothing wrong with any of it.

By the end of the job there had been twelve of those. A door, a shelf, a bit of making good next door, a socket moved, a second visit to the merchant, an afternoon shifting furniture that had not been shifted. Not one of them was unreasonable. Not one was more than an hour or two. Together they came to four days.

He never mentioned money for any of them, and here is why, because it matters: not one of the twelve, on its own, felt worth the awkwardness of a conversation. Refusing a ten-minute favour makes a man look small, and he was three weeks into somebody's home, and the relationship felt more valuable than the ten minutes. That reasoning is correct twelve times and ruinous in total.

What it did to the job was worse than the money. He ran four days over, so the last of the real work was rushed, because the next customer was waiting and he could not go over with them as well. He grew quietly resentful, in the way of a man who has agreed to everything and been asked to agree to one more thing. The customer, who was delighted throughout and had no idea any of it was unusual, later wrote a public word to the effect that the finish felt hurried at the end.

Read that sentence again, because it is the whole letter. The unpriced favours produced a worse job for the customer and a bad word for the fitter.

The second fitter had the same requests, in the same warm tone, and said yes to nearly all of them. He simply had a sentence, worn smooth by use, and he said it every time without a trace of apology or grievance:

Happy to. That's about half a day, so it'd be another eighty pounds, and it moves Thursday to Friday. Shall I add it on?

Almost everyone said yes. Of course they did. The customer was never trying to get something for nothing; she simply had no idea, having never fitted a kitchen, that shifting a socket costs an afternoon. Nobody in her position does. When one or two of them heard the price and the delay and said actually, leave that one, that was not a lost sale. That was a customer choosing, correctly, with information she could not have had otherwise.

He finished on the Friday he had promised, the last of the work was done at the same standard as the first, and he had been paid for every hour he worked.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Say yes. Just say what it costs. The mistake is almost never the agreeing; it is the silence around the agreeing. An extra that is never priced does not disappear, it simply gets paid for out of the other work, the promised date, the finish, and eventually your goodwill, and every one of those is something the customer was relying on.

So understand who is actually harmed. It is tempting to file this under being taken advantage of, but the customer was not a thief and never once knew there was a bill. She wanted a good kitchen finished on Thursday and she got a rushed one finished the following Wednesday, and the reason was a kindness she never asked to be given. The unpriced favour is not generosity. It is a debt taken out in the customer's name, and she pays it in the finish.

The sentence does four things at once and takes eleven seconds: it says yes, so nobody feels refused; it names the hours, which is the fact she is missing; it names the effect on the date, which is the fact she cares about most; and it hands her the decision. You are not haggling. You are informing somebody who cannot see the inside of your week.

And do keep one deliberate freebie, chosen rather than drifted into. The tuppenny washer is a good thing to give away because it is decided in daylight and told about for years. Twelve unnamed hours are not that; they are the same generosity spent invisibly, gratefully received and immediately forgotten. Choose your gift, price the rest, and you will find you can afford to be far more generous than the man who never charges for anything.

Three questions, and think back over your last completed job:

1. What did the extras cost you in hours? Write out every while-you're-here from the last month and total the time. The number is nearly always a working week, and until it is written in one column nobody believes it, because each item was genuinely small when it happened.
2. What is your sentence? Write your version now: happy to, it is roughly this many hours, that means this much and this new date, shall I add it. Say it aloud a few times so it arrives warm rather than defensive. A sentence you have rehearsed is a sentence you will actually use at the awkward moment.
3. What is the one thing you give away on purpose? Name it, and let it be small, visible and told about. Then everything else gets priced, and you can stop deciding twelve times a job whether this is the moment to be brave.

The Answer to the Riddle

Who bought the extras?

The first fitter did, out of his own week, and then charged them to a customer who never knew she was buying anything: she paid in a rushed finish and a job that ran nine days late. The second fitter's customer bought her own extras, knowingly, one at a time, and got exactly what she asked for on the day she was promised it. Both men were generous. Only one of them was generous where it could be seen, priced, and thanked for.

The verse:

A dozen little favours, free,
Will cost a week you'll never see.
So say your yes, and name the price,
And no one pays for it twice.

Until next time. Go and write your eleven-second sentence today, and use it on the very next while-you're-here.

P.S. If the thought of saying it makes you wince, notice that you are wincing on behalf of a customer who has not yet objected to anything. We are all far more frightened of that conversation than the person on the other side of it, who has been buying things her whole life and expects them to have prices.

Also in the archive: Rot Behind the Boards, By Friday, Please and And What Comes Back For It.