An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor.
The manager
there arranges for him to take an aptitude test (Section:Floors, sweeping
and
cleaning).
After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed at minimum wage,
$5.15 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.
Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in
his wallet,
he decides to buy a 25 lb flat of tomatoes at the supermarket.
Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100%
profit.
Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost
$100
before going to sleep that night.
And thus 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 pick-up truck to
support his
expanding business.
By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pick-up
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 would be now, if
you had
been connected to the Internet from the very start!"
After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, "Why, of
course! I would be
a floor cleaner at Microsoft!"
Moral of this story:
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. Seeing that you got this story via e-mail, you're probably closer to
becoming a
janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire.
4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you have already been taken to
the cleaners
by Microsoft.
