[LINK] e-Tomatoes

[Jan Whitaker]

It's almost Friday, right?

>e-Tomatoes
>
>An unemployed man went to apply for a job with Microsoft as a 
>janitor. The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude 
>test. After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed as a 
>janitor at minimum wage, $8.55 an hour. Let me have your e-mail 
>address so that I can send you a form to complete and tell you where 
>to report for work on your first day."
>
>Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an 
>e-mail address. To this the MS manager replies, "Well, then, that 
>means that you virtually don't exist and can therefore hardly expect 
>to be employed by Microsoft."
>
>Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only 
>$10.00 in his wallet, he buys a 25 lb. flat of tomatoes at the 
>supermarket and in less than two hours, he sell all the tomatoes 
>individually at 100 percent profit.
>
>Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with 
>almost $160.00 before going to sleep that night. It dawns on him 
>that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes.
>
>Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his 
>profits quickly. After a short time he acquires a cart to transport 
>several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again 
>so that he can buy a pickup truck to support his expanding business. 
>By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pickup 
>trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, 
>all selling tomatoes.
>
>Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy 
>some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks 
>an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the 
>telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his e-mail address 
>in order to send the final documents electronically. When the man 
>replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned. "What, you 
>don't have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such 
>wealth without the internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine 
>where you could be now if you had been connected to the internet 
>from the very start!"
>
>"Well," replied the tomato millionaire, "I would be a janitor at Microsoft!"
>
>By definition, a fable must have a moral. This one has four:
>
>    1. The internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.
>
>    2. If you don't have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become 
> a millionaire.
>
>    3. Since you found this story on the Internet, you may be closer 
> to becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire.
>
>    4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you have probably 
> already helped a bunch of other guys at Microsoft get rich.


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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