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 gang. 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
$7.25 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 aback, 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 two 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
neighbor-hood gangs to help him with the tomato business; his wife is buying
the tomatoes; 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 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 $7.25 an hour.”
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”