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 $5.35 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 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 that 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 over one 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 $5.35 an
hour."

Which brings us to the moral of the story:

Since you got this story by e-mail, you're probably closer
to being a janitor than a millionaire. Sadly, I received it
also.