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 $7.35 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 lb. 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 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 over one million dollars.
Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final
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A woman wanted a pet to keep her company at home while her husband was off at work and the children were in school. After some research, she decided a parrot would fit her needs nicely. It wouldn't be as much work as a dog or a cat, and it would be very interesting to hear it speak, but unfortunately they were quite expensive.
One day on a shopping trip she spotted a large, beautifully coloured parrot and asked the owner of the store for the price of the bird. The owner said he could let it go for $50. Delighted that such a rare and beautiful bird wasn't more expensive, she agreed to buy it.
Before accepting her money, the owner said "I should tell you first that this bird used to live in a whorehouse. Sometimes it says some pretty... well, embarrassing stuff". The woman was so attracted to the bird and the excellent price that she decided to buy it anyway.
When she got home she placed the bird's cage in her living room and waited patiently for it to say something. The bird studied his new surroundings, and his new owner, and finally said "New house, new madam". The woman was a little taken at the implication of what she had just heard, but after a few minutes decided that it wasn't really all that bad.
When her two teenage daughters came in from school, the bird looked them over and said "New house, new madam, new girls!" After their initial surprise was over, the girls joined their mother in laughter.
Shortly after 5pm the woman's husband came home from work. The bird looked at him, the mother, and the girls and said, "New house, new madam, new girls, same old faces. Hi Steve!"
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!"
