Delftsman

The Tomato Factory

> 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 computer. 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 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 askshim 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.