Don’t Be Pigeonholed
A reader sent me this story:
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 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 neighbourhood 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 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 at Microsoft and making $5.15 an hour.”
Which brings us to the moral:
Since you got this story by email, you’re probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.
Sadly, I received it also.
:: La vida pirata 2.0 :: Bericht aus Bonn...und der Welt // von Karsten Kneese on October 26th, 2005 6:28 am
If I’d had e-mail 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.”
Im Business Opportunities Weblog gibt es eine sehr lesenswerte Geschichte, die doch ein wenig nac…
Cryptblade on October 27th, 2005 5:57 am
I read a variation of this email story where the product being sold was peanuts instead of tomatoes.
Personally, I think peanuts would work better than tomatoes. How many people buy tomatoes off the street? I see people selling bags of popcorn, roasted peanuts – and to sell it on the street in busy corporate areas is smart. Folks always need a snack.
Good story nonetheless – illustrative and edifying.
Dane on October 27th, 2005 6:51 am
I guess it just depends where you live. Here, in suburban California, neighboorhoods end at the egdges of orchards, and it’s very reasonable to see someone standing on a street corner selling some kind of produce.
Chuck on October 27th, 2005 9:18 am
Dane,
I sent this to my brother. He said I forgot the part about when the government shuts down the tomato business to “protect the public”.
Felonious tomato peddling is a serious soceital issue only rivaled by the lack of pretty interns for megalomaniacal legislators.
Chuck
João Ramos on October 29th, 2005 5:07 pm
obviously, its not about having the internet access than will decide your future.
The two things that can lead to what happend here are:
1. extreme need (this case survival)
2. extreme will to do it
Has the first option is too severe and (hopefully) doesnt happen very often, what realy matters is to have a real good strenght to succed. Its the effort you put in to it that will determine your future, and if you are not motivated by starving, well…you must realy try hard. set a goal and fight for it!!!
PPL-4Ever on October 29th, 2005 5:35 pm
Beautiful rags-to-riches story. Wish he would have found our business and brought that desire, attitude, and hard work with him.
We love people like that.
Might have even cost him less to get involved. Maybe….
J Wynia on November 1st, 2005 7:19 am
I don’t see the moral as being the one cited (email being the distinction). Rather, it’s that without a roadblock of some sort and figuring out a way around it on your own, you’d end up on the same path you were already on.
If you aren’t facing some sort of challenge, you’re not likely to innovate or to really succeed because there’s no incentive to put forth extraordinary effort.
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