GPS tracking for cars, trucks, equipment, thieves and ordinary people
I once managed a Colorado dude ranch. My counterpart there, Fred, was the farm-side operations manager. I oversaw the conference center, restaurant, cottages and guests while Fred handled the horse and cow operations.
Smallish, flinty and forever in Wrangler® cowboy garb, Fred could do most anything — overhaul the tractor, drive the hayride team of Belgian horses or patch the barn roof. What he couldn’t do is hold back an opinion, but that’s the cowboy way.
Fred taught me about incentives.
One July day, he dispatched a young cowboy, Earl, to collect a brood cow named Alice. She was an effusive old gal who had birthed many of the beefsteaks our guests had enjoyed in the ranch dining room. Fred had pastured Alice in the south meadow, so as to wean her latest calf. He sent Earl to bring her back.
Earl hooked the horse trailer to the Ford F250 pickup and drove away. Two hours later — tired, sweaty and growling — he returned to the barn. That damn old cow wouldn’t go into the trailer, he said.
Quicker than a wink, Fred pitched a hay bale into the trailer, told Earl to slide over, got in and drove away. They returned 15 minutes later, with Alice.
Earl told it at supper. For two hours, he’d attempted to chase Alice into the trailer, but, no matter, she wouldn’t go. Oppositely, Fred parked the F250 in the field and opened the trailer gate, ensuring the hay bale rested in Alice’s line of sight; he then stepped away from the truck. Within minutes, dame Alice strolled into the trailer and began eating the hay. Fred walked over and calmly closed the gate.
“Then he gave me a stern look and drove us home,” Earl said.
Webster’s says an incentive is something that encourages one to act; it’s a type of stimulation. In the everyday world, incentives are generally financial – paychecks, bonuses and price discounts – but we also have moral, social, personal and compulsory (lawful) incentives, the latter ones designed to help you drive between the lines.
Generally, we all seize the same incentives, but each to a different degree. For example, I’d walk a mile for a slice of home-baked peach pie, but wouldn’t cross the street to see Tom Cruise.
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