Code of Honour

• Before you talk business, find out whether the man came to save his skin or to get work done.
• A warm send-off after a hard deal is a reason to reread the paper in the morning.
• Any monkey can copy gestures. Only a man who’s understood the business can ask the right question.
• Where you don’t know, keep quiet. Honest silence holds up better than an invented story.
• “I can’t steal cars” is safer than lying that you can.
• The right to ask is bought over years.
• Every time you open your mouth, you’re spending your sponsor’s word.
• To lift a man’s fear, tell him who’ll be beside him, and when.
• An admission of fear gets discussed after you’ve left the room.
• A week on the front counter teaches more than a year of speeches.
• The hand is offered by the man who’ll answer for it.
• A friendly hand where there was no friendship is a frisk.
• For a laundryman, a fresh collar, not an expensive watch.
• A suit can be bought in a day. Look at what can’t.
• Talk about his eight in the morning, not about your starch.
• A thought dropped in passing will come back to you as your own.
• Praise that goes over the boss’s head is recruitment.
• Praise one man, and remember the ones you didn’t.
• Language chosen to please proves nothing. The figures underneath it do.
• A question too many kills an acquaintance more surely than rudeness.
• Lend your signature as a sponsor only for a man you’re ready to pay for.