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 toughs. 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 $5.15

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
25 pound 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 ice 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
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 and making $5.15 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.