A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a
young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL
tie, leans out of the window and asks the shepherd,
"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock,
will you give me one?"
The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, "Sure, Why
not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, and
connects it to his AT&T cell phone. He surfs to a NASA page on the
internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get
an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA
satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The
young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports
it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within
seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has
been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database
through an ODBC-connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex
formulas. He uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry
and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out
a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet
printer and finally turns to the shepherd and says, "You have
exactly 1586 sheep."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep."
says the shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused
as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the
shepherd says to the young man,
"Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you
give me back my sheep?" The young man thinks about it for a
second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a consultant." says the shepherd.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did
you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the shepherd. "You
showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for
an answer I already knew; to a question I never asked; and you don't
know anything about my business."
"Now give me back my dog."