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 Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL
tie, leans out 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, connects
it to his AT&T cell phone, 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. Then the young man 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 crap about my
business... Now give me back my dog."
