This one from a friend - it should feel at home here...
Management Consultants
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote glen in the Highlands when a brand-new 4x4 Chelsea Tractor (derogatory label for SUV in the city) advanced along the valley-bottom towards him. The driver, a young man in an Armani suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and assorted gold jewellery, 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, weighs him up - obviously a townie - then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Aye, then. Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his super-slim iPad, Bluetooths it to his latest model iPhone, curses about the lack of coverage but somehow gets a signal, and links to an open-source NASA page on the internet. 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 into an ultra-high-resolution photo. Then the young man opens the digital image in Photoshop and exports it to a visual processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an encrypted message that the image has been processed and the data stored.
He then accesses a remote, high-capacity server and uploads all of this data and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, on his miniaturized LaserJet printer he prints out a full-colour, 10-page report, turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly one thousand, five hundred and eighty-six sheep."
The shepherd doesn’t show whether he’s impressed or not, but concedes: "That's right. Well, I suppose you can take one of my sheep," he says. He watches the young man select an animal, and looks on amused as the business-type opens the off-road’s tailgate and stuffs it into the vehicle.
Then the shepherd says to the young man: "I tell you what. If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?"
The dynamic young executive thinks about it for a second and then agrees, "Alright, why not?"
"You're a management consultant," says the shepherd.
“Good heavens! That’s correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing needed," answered the shepherd. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew; an answer to a question I never asked; you used staggering amounts of equipment, costing an absolute fortune, to reach that answer; and you know diddly squat about my flock or my work. Now give me back my dog."
