There was this farmer who decided she wanted to start raising ducks. She placed an order for 100 rare and unusual baby ducklings and went to a lot of trouble to prepare a safe, enclosed field right next to her house since she wanted to make it easy to keep an eye on them. She tried to make the field fun and interesting for the ducklings so that they would be happy and stick around and not wander off to some other, competing farm. She built a little pool for them (wading pool only, since litle ducklings can't tolerate getting wet and cold) and a nice little coop with clean straw and a door so she could close it every night and make them warm and safe from foxes. All in all she worked pretty hard and did her best to make everything nice and neat. After all, she wanted the ducks to thrive and she also didn't want to make a lot of work for herself to properly take care of them.
Finally the day came when the baby ducklings arrived. The farmer put them in the previously prepared field, and was pleased to see them running around, enjoying the sun and eating grass.** Suddenly she realized she had made a big mistake! She had not prepared a watering system and the ducklings needed plenty of clean, fresh water to be happy and healthy. Now, all the watering equipment was out at the barn, about 100 meters from the house. So the farmer ran over to the barn and selected one of her 55 gallon drums, which was already full of water. Now, she noticed that the drum's faucet was leaking quite badly but she was pressed for time, so instead of emptying the drum and repairing it properly (she didn't want to waste the water nor take the extra time to refill it) she just slapped some quick setting cement on the leak which seemed to solve the problem, at least for the moment.
And because the farmer didn't want to waste water or time refilling the big drum, she laboriously rolled it from the barn back to the house, taking care not to hit or bump the hastily repaired faucet, further damaging it. Finally she got the drum to the nice field she had prepared for the ducklings. However, much to her dismay, when she tried to lift the heavy drum onto a concrete platform she placed there to make the drum stable, it slipped and the protruding faucet banged and the ground and started to spout water!
The farmer wanted to hurry up and fix the spraying water since after all she didn't want to waste any and she didn't want to get the ducks all wet (again, baby ducklings need to stay dry and warm) so she slapped on some more of the quick drying cement. That helped a bit, so she kept adding more and more, and soon enough the faucet was big mess of quick drying cement but the leak had dwindled down to a little trickle of water, and since the farmer was very busy she decided that was good enough for now (after all the ducks were drinking the water much faster than it was leaking in any case).
Over the time the farm became very successful and the farmer hired more people to come help her with all the animals and crops. However the leaking problem never went away, in fact it got a little worse over time until someone noticed that if you filled the drum only half full the leak was a lot slower since the water pressure was much lower. So everyone that came to work on the farm learned you only filled the duck water drum half full, and if that meant you needed to check it twice a day to make sure the ducks had enough water, well, that was just the way it was. Actually, from time to time someone would forget that rule and accidentally fill the drum to the top, which usually caused a big mess in the duck field (typically this happened when someone new started working on the farm and everyone forget to tell him or her that rule).
Eventually the successful farmer decided to retire, and the new people that ran the farm really wanted to fix that leak, which was a source of trouble and waste on the farm. They couldn't just repair it properly, the reasoning went, because that would meant draining the drum and working on it for a day or so, but since the ducks needed water all the time to be healthy that was not possible. Some people thought the best thing to do was build an entirely new drum made of all steel and properly welded all around. Other people thought the best thing was to make a totally new type of watering system that used lots and lots of little drums, that way if one drum had trouble the entire watering system didn't need to be shut down just to fix it. But all those things cost time and money, both of which are in short supply at a farm, so people spent a lot of time talking about what to do, but nobody ever did much.
And the leak continued.
** In real life, if you ever do get some duckings or chicks, be sure to give them some water BEFORE allowing them access to food, otherwise them quite likely will die.
Finally the day came when the baby ducklings arrived. The farmer put them in the previously prepared field, and was pleased to see them running around, enjoying the sun and eating grass.** Suddenly she realized she had made a big mistake! She had not prepared a watering system and the ducklings needed plenty of clean, fresh water to be happy and healthy. Now, all the watering equipment was out at the barn, about 100 meters from the house. So the farmer ran over to the barn and selected one of her 55 gallon drums, which was already full of water. Now, she noticed that the drum's faucet was leaking quite badly but she was pressed for time, so instead of emptying the drum and repairing it properly (she didn't want to waste the water nor take the extra time to refill it) she just slapped some quick setting cement on the leak which seemed to solve the problem, at least for the moment.
And because the farmer didn't want to waste water or time refilling the big drum, she laboriously rolled it from the barn back to the house, taking care not to hit or bump the hastily repaired faucet, further damaging it. Finally she got the drum to the nice field she had prepared for the ducklings. However, much to her dismay, when she tried to lift the heavy drum onto a concrete platform she placed there to make the drum stable, it slipped and the protruding faucet banged and the ground and started to spout water!
The farmer wanted to hurry up and fix the spraying water since after all she didn't want to waste any and she didn't want to get the ducks all wet (again, baby ducklings need to stay dry and warm) so she slapped on some more of the quick drying cement. That helped a bit, so she kept adding more and more, and soon enough the faucet was big mess of quick drying cement but the leak had dwindled down to a little trickle of water, and since the farmer was very busy she decided that was good enough for now (after all the ducks were drinking the water much faster than it was leaking in any case).
Over the time the farm became very successful and the farmer hired more people to come help her with all the animals and crops. However the leaking problem never went away, in fact it got a little worse over time until someone noticed that if you filled the drum only half full the leak was a lot slower since the water pressure was much lower. So everyone that came to work on the farm learned you only filled the duck water drum half full, and if that meant you needed to check it twice a day to make sure the ducks had enough water, well, that was just the way it was. Actually, from time to time someone would forget that rule and accidentally fill the drum to the top, which usually caused a big mess in the duck field (typically this happened when someone new started working on the farm and everyone forget to tell him or her that rule).
Eventually the successful farmer decided to retire, and the new people that ran the farm really wanted to fix that leak, which was a source of trouble and waste on the farm. They couldn't just repair it properly, the reasoning went, because that would meant draining the drum and working on it for a day or so, but since the ducks needed water all the time to be healthy that was not possible. Some people thought the best thing to do was build an entirely new drum made of all steel and properly welded all around. Other people thought the best thing was to make a totally new type of watering system that used lots and lots of little drums, that way if one drum had trouble the entire watering system didn't need to be shut down just to fix it. But all those things cost time and money, both of which are in short supply at a farm, so people spent a lot of time talking about what to do, but nobody ever did much.
And the leak continued.
** In real life, if you ever do get some duckings or chicks, be sure to give them some water BEFORE allowing them access to food, otherwise them quite likely will die.
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