Tomatoes or Technology?

I got the following message as a forwarded email. Its more fun to read in an email (you will see why) - but had to share it with you guys...

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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 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 neighbourhood 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 email, you're
probably closer to being a janitor than a
millionaire.

Sadly, I received it also




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