Your example isn’t even far fetched. A friend of mine who worked in construction knew a crew of framers whose employer paid them based on the number of nails they used. Of course, they did exactly what their dumb employer should have expected them to do: Use way more nails than needed. Any place a nail would fit, they added one. He said listening to the crew work was literally a non-stop rapid fire thunk thunk thunk thunk as at least one of them was busy emptying his nailgun into the work at any given time. No idea how they stayed in business, but people giving dumb incentives is nothing new.