A fellow stopped at a rural gas station and after filling his tank, he paid the bill and 
bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola, and he  watched a couple of men 
working along the roadside.

One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along 
behind and filled in the hole. While one was  digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet 
behind filling in the old.

The men worked right past the fellow with the soft drink and went on down the road.  "I 
can't stand this," said the man, tossing the  can into a trash container and headed down 
the road toward the men.

"Hold it, hold it," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here with this 
digging?"   "Well, we work for the government," one of the men said.

"But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You're not accomplishing 
anything.  Aren't you wasting the taxpayers' money?"

"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping 
his brow.   "Normally there's three of us: me, Rodney, and Mike.    I dig the hole, 
Rodney sticks in the tree, and Mike here puts the dirt back.  Now just because Rodney's 
sick, that don't mean that Mike and me can't work."