The carpenter cannot see the room

Someone in Hail asks a carpenter for shelves along one wall of the sitting room. Something simple, they say. Something that fits. You know the kind of thing.

The carpenter nods, because he does know a kind of thing. He has built hundreds of shelves. He measures the wall, chooses a wood he likes, and comes back two weeks later with deep, dark, sturdy shelves that would hold a library.

The owner wanted pale, shallow ledges for a few plants and photographs. They are disappointed, and a little annoyed that he did not just understand.

But he could not. He has never sat in that room in the evening. He does not know the light from the window, or that the sofa is being replaced, or that the books went to a cousin last year. He does not know what the owner knows, does not see what they see, and may not even like what they like. Asking him to do it as they would is asking him to read a mind.

It is tempting to treat this as his failure. The more useful view is that the gap was the owner's to close. They had a picture and kept it to themselves, and then expected him to arrive at the same one.

The alternative takes more effort at the start. Show him a photograph of shelves you love. Say what will sit on them. Tell him what the room is for. Let him ask questions, and answer them properly. Make it easy for him to do the job you actually want.

Now and then you find someone who needs none of this and gets it right anyway. They deserve more praise than they get. For everyone else, the hard part is not choosing the craftsman. It is going over to his side of the conversation and making yourself understood.