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An unemployed man is desperate to support his
family. His wife watches TV all day and his three
teenage kids have dropped out of high school to
hang around with the local toughs.
He applies for a janitor’s job at a large firm and
easily passes an aptitude test. The human resources
manager tells him, «You will be hired at minimum
wage of $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail
address so that we can get you in the loop. Our
system will automatically e-mail you all the forms
and advise you when to start and where to report
on your first day.»
Taken aback, the man protests that he is poor and
has neither a computer nor an e-mail address.
To this the manager replies, «You must understand
that to a company like ours that means that you
virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address
you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech
firm. I’m sorry.Good day.»
Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn
and having only $10 in his wallet, he walks past a
farmers’ market and sees a stand selling 25lb crates
of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries
it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In
less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and
makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several
times more that day, he ends up with almost $100
and arrives home that night with several bags of
groceries for his family.
During the night he decides to repeat the tomato
business the next day. By the end of the week he
is getting up early every day and working into the
night. He multiplies his profits quickly.
Early in the second week he acquires a cart to
transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time,
but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy
a broken-down pickup truck.
At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His
two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to
help him with the tomato business, his wife is
buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking
night courses at the community college so she can
keep books for him.
By the end of the second year he has a dozen very
nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously
unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He
continues to work hard.
Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns
a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse which his
wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the
boys manage. The tomato company’s payroll has put
hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work.
His daughter reports that the business grossed a
million dollars.
Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life
insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he
picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances.
Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in
order to send the final documents electronically.
When the man replies that he doesn’t have time to
mess with a computer and has no e-mail address,
the insurance man is stunned.
«What, you don’t have e-mail? No computer? No
internet? Just think where you would be today if
you’d had all of that five years ago!»
«Ha!» snorts the man. «If I’d had e-mail five years
ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and
making $5.15 an hour.»
Which brings us to the moral:
Since you got this story by e-mail, you’re probably
closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.
