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 the 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 a 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.