The Tomato Company
An unemployed man is desperate to support his
family of a wife and three kids.
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 $5.35 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 back, 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. Good day."
Stunned, the man leaves Not knowing where to
turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a
farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb.
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 that 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 over one
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 $5.35 an hour."
Which brings us to the moral of the story:
Since you got this story by e-mail, you're
probably closer to being a janitor than a
millionaire.
Sadly, I received it also.
