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 personnel 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
no 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 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."