Who Mends Chairs?

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two men who mended the seats of chairs, and both of them had the same slack fortnight every February.

Two chair caners in the town I have never named, the same soaked cane and the same ninepence a seat.
Both worked clean, both worked quickly, and both were liked wherever they had been.
Both knew four hundred households by name, and could have told you the kitchen each chair stood in.
One of them spent his slack fortnight writing to those four hundred households.
Same trade, same price, the same two idle weeks in the same cold month.
Who did the other one spend his fortnight with?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two chair caners, then, both working out of sheds at the back of their own houses. Both bought cane in bundles and stood it in a water butt overnight until it went from straw to whip. Both could strip a ruined rush seat, clear the rails, and have a kitchen chair back on its four feet in an afternoon, with that slap of the open palm on a new seat that tells you it will hold a grown man. Both charged ninepence, and a shilling and three for the big carvers with arms.

The first man knew that February would be thin, and did a sensible thing about it. He had a book of every household he had ever worked for, four hundred and eleven of them, and in the first week of the month he wrote to the lot. A plain, decent note. He was obliged to them for past favours, he had time in hand before the spring, and if they knew of anybody with a chair wanting a new seat he would be glad to be mentioned. Nine days of it, and the better part of a sovereign on paper and postage. It brought him eleven jobs, which he thought a modest success, and he did the same again the next February.

The second man spent his fortnight differently. He sat down with a sheet of paper and tried to answer a question he had never put to himself: when somebody in this town finds a seat gone through, who do they ask? Not who do they buy from. Who do they ask. He got nine names, and not one of them was a customer of his.

The auctioneer who sold up house contents on the first Tuesday of every month, whose lots always held a dozen chairs with their bottoms out. The cabinetmaker who made new chairs beautifully and would not touch a repair. The carrier, who moved furniture for every family that shifted house. The postmistress. The caretaker of the chapel hall, who had two hundred rush seats under his hand and a tea every Friday. The schoolmistress. The ironmonger, who sold cane by the bundle to hopeful men who then made a hash of it in their own back kitchens. The land agent for the two big farms. The woman who kept the lodging house on the top road.

He called on all nine. He took a finished seat to put in their hands, told each one what he charged and the two things he would not do, and left a single plain note of a dozen lines rather than a stack of cards to be shuffled into a drawer. And he asked each of them the same small thing: when somebody asks you who mends chairs, say my name, and say I come out on Thursdays.

The auctioneer by himself sent him more work in the following year than the whole four hundred and eleven households had ever sent either of them. The chapel caretaker had him in for two days in September, and four of the women who poured the Friday tea had him at their own houses before Christmas.

Be fair to the first man. His letter was well written, his customers were fond of him, and eleven jobs for a sovereign is no disgrace. His trouble was not his manner and not his craft. It was arithmetic. A household needs a chair seat perhaps once in nine years, so for any one of his four hundred friends the subject came up about as often as a funeral. The auctioneer was asked twice a month.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The work goes to whoever comes to mind in the ten seconds after the question is asked, and in every district there are a dozen people who are asked your question twenty times a year while your own customers are asked it twice in a decade. You are not short of goodwill. You are short of the moments when goodwill is of any use to you, and those moments are not spread evenly across the town. They are concentrated in a very few hands.

Three reasons this works, and the first is only counting. Four hundred customers who think well of you, each asked about your trade once in five years, produce perhaps eighty askings between them, scattered, and mostly in conversations where your name never surfaces at all. Nine well chosen people who are asked twice a month produce two hundred, every one from somebody with the trouble in his hands at that moment. Warmth of feeling is not the currency here. Frequency of being asked is the currency, and it is worth finding out who holds it before you spend another fortnight writing to people who love you and cannot help you.

The second reason is that the person being asked is not doing you a kindness. He is getting himself out of a small difficulty. Somebody has put a question to him in his own doorway that he is expected to be able to answer, and he would like to answer it quickly and without being blamed for it afterwards. That is the whole of his interest in the matter, and it tells you what to give him: not your enthusiasm, but a reply he can make in one breath and not regret. A name, a trade, a price and a day. A man invited to think of anybody will think of nobody, and a man handed four facts will repeat all four of them for years.

The third reason is the one that makes the work arrive already half sold. When the auctioneer gives your name he is lending you his own standing, in front of a man who trusts him and will be back next month. That is a heavier thing than any advertisement, and it is why the first job you take through any of the nine must be done better than anything else in your week, at the price you quoted and on the day you said. You are not being paid for that job. You are being examined.

Now, you may say that this is only the cultivating of cronies, which has a bad name. Usually it deserves it. The ordinary version is a lunch, some flattery, a vague agreement to put work each other's way, and nothing whatever afterwards, because neither man was removing any difficulty from the other's week. What makes it honest and makes it work is that the difficulty is real: the postmistress is genuinely asked, genuinely does not know, and dislikes not knowing. If you cannot say in a sentence what trouble of theirs your name takes away, you have no business on their doorstep, and no amount of good fellowship will make up for it.

One practical note on knowing whether any of it works. Do not go round asking new customers who sent them, since people answer that question with whatever is nearest to hand and the reply will quietly mislead you for years. Give each of the nine something slightly different to pass on, and let the work tell you itself which hand it came out of.

Two cautions. The first: do not pay for it. The moment a shilling is attached to the recommendation, the recommendation goes to whoever pays the shilling, and the thing you actually wanted, which was the man's judgement and his standing behind it, has been taken out of it altogether. Worse, he now has an income to defend, and will go on sending you work you should not have. The second: a man can only recommend what he can describe. Keep what you give him to one trade, one price shape and one day of the week. Tell the auctioneer that you do cane and rush and upholstery and polishing and small joinery repairs, and he will recommend you for none of them, because he cannot remember which. And if you have more work than you can do promptly, leave the nine names where they are until you have not, since nine disappointed recommenders is not one lost reputation but nine.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Who in my district is asked my question, and how often? Write the names down, and beside each one your honest guess at the number of times a year somebody puts the question to them. You want six or nine names, not four hundred, and most of them will never buy a thing from you.
2. What difficulty of theirs does my name take away? Say it in one sentence before you call on anybody. If the honest answer is nothing, and you simply want their custom, you are not building a recommendation, you are becoming a nuisance in a doorway.
3. What exactly will they say? Write out the sentence you want spoken for you, in under ten words, and check that it answers the question actually asked. Whatever you leave unwritten will be invented, and what is invented is usually your price.

The Answer to the Riddle

Who did the other one spend his fortnight with?

With nine people who would never, in their whole lives, buy a chair seat from him. He gave each of them two things: the answer to a question they were tired of being unable to answer, and a seat they had held in their own hands and slapped with their own palm.

The first man spent his fortnight with four hundred and eleven people who were fond of him and who, between them, would need him about forty-five times a year whatever he did. Both men worked. Only one of them worked where the question was being asked.

The verse:

The friend who loves you asks it twice
in all his years, and stops;
the man who hears it every week
is where your answer drops.

Until next time. Go and write down the six people in your district who are asked your question most often, and call on the first of them before Saturday.

P.S. There is a second use for that short list, and it costs nothing. A customer who has gone off you simply stops appearing, which teaches you precisely nothing. A man who has been sending you work and stops has usually heard something, and because his own standing was in it he will tell you what it was if you ask him plainly. The nine names are your cheapest advertising. They are also the only honest report on your trade you will ever be given for free.

Also in the archive: The Man Who Sold the Horse, Who Sent You and The Name He Lent.