Low Hanging Fruit

"What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" was referenced in a pleasant blog followed elsewhere and referenced as a regional idiom.  Language is important and I've been away from certain forms of learning for many years and felt compelled to confirm my comprehension of "idiom."  A collection of words with certain meaning not immediately determined from the words.  It was perfectly clear to me what that sentence meant.  Something a bit stupid or wasteful is occurring or you have just done a really dumb thing after receiving explicit directions.

"You'd better keep an eye out for that!"  might be national rather than regional but after looking at it (with an eye out?) it seems like a CSI plot rather than cautionary advice about something you might miss (because you are stupid?).

"Let's go after the low-hanging fruit" is now part of corporate process improvement culture, as idiomatic as it

may be.  My opinion was that simple fixes generally fixed simple problems, not big problems and rarely led to any transformational change.   Anyone can go after low-hanging fruit and it has immediate return.  If you don't like a staff member, fire them or move them to something they don't enjoy.  If you don't like your IT department's security policies circumvent them and keep all your files on www.box.com .  Staff resources, corporate knowledge and a legacy of past work that stabilizes the innovation framework of tomorrow is really important.  It's a bad idea to eat all the apples in the summer.  It might make sense to save a few for the late fall.  If you want a treat, have an apple but don't tear down the branches which provide next years fruit.  As an aside I did lose a lot of apple trees to the cold and to deer this past winter but this comment makes no particular sense right here.

OK the point is that if you are after fruit, get a ladder.  Put some work into solving your problem.  Work hard at it.  Maybe the answer is some sort of lift instead of a ladder.  Don't be put off by the cost.  Perhaps there are competitive lease rates or there are fewer injuries and your worker's compensation, liability insurance and health care costs will be less, or you'll just pick more apples or cut your labor costs or you employees will enjoy it or you can use the lift for other stuff when it's not apple picking time.

The deer spit is awesome.  A few years ago there were two deer that frequented the windfalls of this tree.  I'd toss an apple between me and them and they'd advance.  With each throw they'd get closer.  After a month of this they'd start to salivate just seeing me.