Sunday, March 19, 2017

The Butchers Knife

The King was inspecting the royal kitchen and he came to the section where the meat was butchered. He watched the first butcher quickly convert a slab of meat into a pile of chops. "Very good!" said the king, "how long have you been working here?"
The first butcher replied, "I have been here five years. I have sharpened my knife so many times that it is now an inch smaller than when I got it." The king nodded his approval and moved on to the second butcher.
"I see that your knife has been sharpened many times. How long have you been here?" he asked the second butcher.
"your Highness is very observant," said the second butcher. "I have been here ten years. I can de-bone a chicken in 30 seconds without wasting any meat."
The king told his assistant to give the man a raise.
Coming near to the end of his tour the king saw the final butcher and told his assistant "this man is either very lazy or very inexperienced. I don't want him here. Get rid of him."
The third butcher was shocked. He fell to his knees and begged the king to tell him why he was being fired.
The king said "the first butcher has been here 5 years and his knife has been sharpened so many times it is an inch shorter. The second butcher has been here 10 years and his knife is half gone. Your knife is brand new. You must be a very bad butcher."
The sad butcher told the king, "Your Highness, I have been here 20 years. My knife skillfully slices through the meat and no longer touches bone or tendon, therefore it never goes dull. Why should I sharpen a knife that isn't dull?"
The moral of the story is left as an exercise for the reader.
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