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....
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5 comments:
I think I read the same story with the background about 20 - 30 years before this one. The janitor was a clerical position and then the email and computer was literacy. The business was fishing...
Talk about financial freedom, I am closer and closer to get off the hook with any big corporation with good compensation and nice benefits package. I may be better off, happier and more fulfilled if I let go of all those.
A very likely goal: dessert shop. We were bluffing about that last week when I posted something about cha-cha sweet soup on my Chinese blog. May be it's time I really explore the likelihood of getting it all away from sticking with the good old comfy life of a tiny corpoate employee... ;P
A story is always a making up to fit the moral. Please can I have the janitor version? He may still be happy doh. No one knows. No one can tell.
I know long ago I won't be rich. For people to be rich, when they have money, they think of using the money to make more money. For those who are not rich, like myself, when we have money, we think of spending it.
Aulina,
To me, "financial freedom" means you are off the hook......good benefit package and nice compensation become baits at the hook and a big hurdle for major career move.
A happy and fulfilling life should not be the end result of your career, rather, it should be coming along with your career. That's why I am actively searching for/switching to a job (career) which allows me to achieve my long term career goals, develop my interests along the way, and keep me motivated.
Xiao Zhu:
Of course this is a moral rather than a true story. Did you get the moral behind this story?
Ruth: "Rich" could be defined in multiple ways: Monetary rich is just a matter of relativity - you can make a million but if your regular expenses exceed what you make, you are considered broke.
Using money to make more money is very common for all, but it could be a never ending process. It is okay only if you are enjoying the process. But if you are suffering during the process, you better think twice of why you are making yourself suffering......for something that will never ends.
Just my 2 cents.
The moral behind this story is so explicit already. This story has already pointed out aother perspective of life. You may consider me as a devil's advocate. I just try to play some tricks in shifting our paradigm to another angle.
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