Subject: The Tomato Co
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 $5.15 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 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 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.

Sadly, I received it also.

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *