Microsoft

< An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor.
< The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude test (Section:
< Floors, sweeping and cleaning).
< After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed at minimum
< wage, $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address, so that I can
< send you a
< form to complete and tell you where to report for work on your first day.
< Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an
< e-mail address. To this the MS manager replies, "Well, then, that means
< that
< you virtually don't exist and can therefore hardly expect to be employed.
< Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in
< his wallet, he decides to buy a 25 lb flat of tomatoes at the
< supermarket.
< Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100%
< profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up
< with
< almost $100 before going to sleep that night. And thus it dawns on him
< that
< he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes.
< Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his
< profits
< quickly. After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen
< boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a
< pick-up truck to support his expanding business. By the end of the second
< year, he is the owner of a fleet of pick-up trucks and manages a staff of
< a
< hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes.
< Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some
< life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an
< insurance
< plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the telephone
< conversation,
< the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final
< documents electronically.
< When the man replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned,
< "What,
< you don't have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth
< without the Internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would
< be
< now, if you had been connected to the internet from the very start!"
< After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, "Why, of
< course!
< I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!"
< Moral of this story:
< 1. The Internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.
< 2. If you don't have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become a
< millionaire.
< 3. Seeing that you got this story via e-mail, you're probably closer to
< becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire. (Not you Jeff, I
know it was printed for you!)
< 4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you have already been taken to
< the
< cleaners by Microsoft.
< 5. And God forbid if you own any
< Microsoft stock... better start selling
< tomatoes.