He asks the farmer: “If I tell you how many sheep you have, will you give me one?” The farmer agrees. The consultant takes out his phone, checks his position by GPS, goes on to access the website of a commercial satellite operator, orders a hi-def photo of the area they are in, sends it to a lab, analyses it, enters the data in a database, crunches the numbers and gets back the result. Triumphantly he announces: “You have exactly 1,546 sheep! And now you have one less.”

He then grabs an animal and puts in the trunk of his car. The farmer nonchalantly replies “If I tell you what your job is, will you give it back to me?” The consultant agrees, and the farmer tells him, “You are a management consultant.” “How did you know?” asks the consultant. The farmer replies: “Easy. You arrive unasked, you demand to be paid for a question to which I already know the answer, without having been commissioned, and you only have a vague idea of what you are talking about. Now, give me back my dog.”