"A crate of tomatoes"

knight0334 · Posted: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:54:40 Post Subject: "A crate of tomatoes"

Subject: A CRATE OF TOMATOES

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 $5.15 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 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 25lb 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 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 at Microsoft and making $5.15 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral of this 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.

LaTech · Posted: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:58:57 Post Subject:

lmao...that's a good one

vulcan · Posted: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:37:02 Post Subject:

that is very good. unfortunatly, having just spent the last 36 hours variously saying goodbye to company members and fiancee, knowing i'm not going to see her for at least 6 weeks, then spending 11 hours on a coach variously bursting into tears and not being able to sleep, then having to sort out two months worth of dirty washing, bills and university forms, and having lost nearly Â£1000 in the last month, i'm not in the mood for laughing. It will all be better after some sleep.... on the plus side, I'm back again!

jake_johnson · Posted: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:48:34 Post Subject:

very humorous. DIE COMPUTER DIE!! I WANA GET RICH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HackaX0rus · Posted: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:24:45 Post Subject:

hmmm...kinda makes me want some tomatoes...

knight0334 · Posted: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:38:08 Post Subject:

God knows I'm closer to being a janitor then to being rich.

I've already lost out by not patenting some of my ideas when they first struck. like, those "Split fire sparkplugs", I was making them in the mid 80's for my gocarts with a mig welder. continued to make my own for my big boy cars later on.

valveless engine heads too.. I had them designed on paper when I was in highschool... then 8 years later I see a HotRod mag showing just about the same damn thing on some article. ...phuck me.