Consultant

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture in Idaho 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 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. 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 crap
about my business...."

" ... Now give me back my dog."