07级
Big Bucks the Easy Way
John G. Hubbell
1 “You ought to look into this,” I suggested to our two college-age sons. “It might be a way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all the time.” I handed them some magazines in a plastic bag someone had hung on our doorknob. A message printed on the bag offered leisurely, lucrative work (“Big Bucks the Easy Way!”) of delivering more such bags.
2 “I don’t mind the indignity,” the older one answered.
3 “I can live with it,” his brother agreed.
4 “But it pains me,” I said, “to find that you both have been panhandling so long that it no longer embarrasses you.”
5 The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing. Pleased, I left town on a business trip. By midnight I was comfortably settled in a hotel room far from home. The phone rang. It was my wife. She wanted to know how my day had gone.
6 “Great!” I enthused. “How was your day?” I inquired.
7 “Super!” she snapped. “Just super! And it’s only getting started. Another truck just pulled up out front.”
8 “Another truck?”
9 “The third one this evening. The first delivered four thousand Montgomery Wards. The second brought four thousand Sears, Roebucks. I don’t know what this one has, but I’m sure it will be four thousand of something. Since you are responsible, I thought you might like to know what’s happening.”
10 What I was being blamed for, it turned out, was a newspaper strike which made it necessary to hand-deliver the advertising inserts that normally are included with the Sunday paper. The company had promised our boys $600 for delivering these inserts to 4,000 houses by Sunday morning.
11 “Piece of cake!” our older college son had shouted.
12 “Six hundred bucks!” His brother had echoed, “And we can do the job in two hours!”
13 “Both the Sears and Ward ads are four newspaper-size pages,” my wife informed me. “There are thirty-two thousand pages of advertising on our porch. Even as we speak, two big guys are carrying armloads of paper up the walk. What do we do about all this?”
14 “Just tell the boys to get busy,” I instructed. “They’re college men. They’ll do what they have to do.”
15 At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent message to telephone my wife. Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering. There had been several more truckloads of ad inserts. “They’re for department stores, dime stores, drugstores, grocery stores, auto stores and so on. Some are whole magazine sections. We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pages of advertising here! They are crammed wall-to-wall all through the house in stacks taller than your oldest son. There’s only enough room for people to walk in, take one each of the eleven inserts, roll them together, slip a rubber band around them and slide them into a plastic bag. We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant in America!” Her voice kept rising, as if working its way out of the range of the human ear. “All this must be delivered by seven o’clock Sunday morning.”
16 “Well, you had better get those guys banding and sliding as fast as they can, and I’ll talk to you later. Got a lunch date.”
17 When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.
18 “Did you have a nice lunch?” she asked sweetly. I had had a marvelous steak, but knew better by now than to say so.
19 “Awful,” I reported. “Some sort of sour fish. Eel, I think.”
20 “Good. Your college sons have hired their younger brothers and sisters and a couple of neighborhood children to help for five dollars each. Assembly lines have been set up. In the language of diplomacy, there is ’movement.’ ”
21 “That’s encouraging.”
22 “No, it’s not,” she corrected. “It’s very discouraging. They’ve been at it for hours. Plastic bags have been filled and piled to the ceiling, but all this hasn’t made a dent, not a dent, in the situation! It’s almost as if the inserts keep reproducing themselves!”
23 “Another thing,” she continued. “Your college sons must learn that one does not get the best out of employees by threatening them with bodily harm.”
24 Obtaining an audience with son No. 1, I snarled, “I’ll kill you if you threaten one of those kids again! Idiot! You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the most bags.”
25 “But that would cut into our profit,” he suggested.
26 “There won’t be any profit unless those kids enable you to make all the deliveries on time. If they don’t, you two will have to remove all that paper by yourselves. And there will be no eating or sleeping until it is removed.”
27 There was a short, thoughtful silence. Then he said, “Dad, you have just worked a profound change in my personality.”
28 “Do it!”
29 “Yes, sir!”
30 By the following evening, there was much for my wife to report. The bonus program had worked until someone demanded to see the color of cash. Then some activist on the work force claimed that the workers had no business settling for $5 and a few competitive bonuses while the bosses collected hundreds of dollars each. The organizer had declared that all the workers were entitled to $5 per hour! They would not work another minute until the bosses agreed.
31 The strike lasted less than two hours. In mediation, the parties agreed on $2 per hour. Gradually, the huge stacks began to shrink.
32 As it turned out, the job was completed three hours before Sunday’s 7 a.m. deadline. By the time I arrived home, the boys had already settled their accounts: $150 in labor costs, $40 for gasoline, and a like amount for gifts — boxes of candy for saintly neighbors who had volunteered station wagons and help in delivery and a dozen roses for their mother. This left them with $185 each — about two-thirds the minimum wage for the 91 hours they worked. Still, it was “enough“, as one of them put it, to enable them to “avoid indignity” for quite a while.
33 All went well for some weeks. Then one Saturday morning my attention was drawn to the odd goings-on of our two youngest sons. They kept carrying carton after carton from various corners of the house out the front door to curbside. I assumed their mother had enlisted them to remove junk for a trash pickup. Then I overheard them discussing finances.
34 “Geez, we’re going to make a lot of money!”
35 “We’re going to be rich!”
36 Investigation revealed that they were offering “for sale or rent” our entire library.
37 “No! No!” I cried. “You can’t sell our books!”
38 “Geez, Dad, we thought you were done with them!”
39 “You’re never ’done’ with books,” I tried to explain.
40 “Sure you are. You read them, and you’re done with them. That’s it. Then you might as well make a little money from them. We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for ...”
To Lie or Not To Lie — The Doctor’s Dilemma
Sissela Bok
1 Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patients — to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death? In medicine as in law, government, and other lines of work, the requirements of honesty often seem dwarfed by greater needs: the need to shelter from brutal news or to uphold a promise of secrecy; to expose corruption or to promote the public interest.
2 What should doctors say, for example, to a 46-year-old man coming in for a routine physical checkup just before going on vacation with his family who, though he feels in perfect health, is found to have a form of cancer that will cause him to die within six months? Is it best to tell him the truth? If he asks, should the doctors deny that he is ill, or minimize the gravity of the illness? Should they at least conceal the truth until after the family vacation?
3 Doctors confront such choices often and urgently. At times, they see important reasons to lie for the patient’s own sake; in their eyes, such lies differ sharply from self-serving ones.
4 Studies show that most doctors sincerely believe that the seriously ill do not want to know the truth about their condition, and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that they may recover more slowly, or deteriorate faster, perhaps even commit suicide. As one physician wrote: “Ours is a profession which traditionally has been guided by a precept that transcends the virtue of uttering the truth for truth’s sake, and that is ‘as far as possible do no harm.’ ”
5 Armed with such a precept, a number of doctors may slip into deceptive practices that they assume will “do no harm” and may well help their patients. They may prescribe innumerable placebos, sound more encouraging than the facts warrant, and distort grave news, especially to the incurably ill and the dying.
6 But the illusory nature of the benefits such deception is meant to produce is now coming to be documented. Studies show that, contrary to the belief of many physicians, an overwhelming majority of patients do want to be told the truth, even about grave illness, and feel betrayed when they learn that they have been misled. We are also learning that truthful information, humanely conveyed, helps patients cope with illness: helps them tolerate pain better, need less medicine, and even recover faster after surgery.
7 Not only do lies not provide the “help” hoped for by advocates of benevolent deception; they invade the autonomy of patients and render them unable to make informed choices concerning their own health, including the choice of whether to be a patient in the first place. We are becoming increasingly aware of all that can befall patients in the course of their illness when information is denied or distorted.
8 Dying patients especially — who are easiest to mislead and most often kept in the dark — can then not make decisions about the end of life: about whether or not they should enter a hospital, or have surgery; about where and with whom they should spend their remaining time; about how they should bring their affairs to a close and take leave.
9 Lies also do harm to those who tell them: harm to their integrity and, in the long run, to their credibility. Lies hurt their colleagues as well. The suspicion of deceit undercuts the work of the many doctors who are scrupulously honest with their patients; it contributes to the spiral of lawsuits and of “defensive medicine”, and thus it injures, in turn, the entire medical profession.
10 Sharp conflicts are now arising. Patients are learning to press for answers. Patients’ bills of rights require that they be informed about their condition and about alternatives for treatment. Many doctors go to great lengths to provide such information. Yet even in hospitals with the most eloquent bill of rights, believers in benevolent deception continue their age-old practices. Colleagues may disapprove but refrain from objecting. Nurses may bitterly resent having to take part, day after day, in deceiving patients, but feel powerless to take a stand.
11 There is urgent need to debate this issue openly. Not only in medicine, but in other professions as well, practitioners may find themselves repeatedly in difficulty where serious consequences seem avoidable only through deception. Yet the public has every reason to be wary of professional deception, for such practices are peculiarly likely to become deeply rooted, to spread, and to erode trust. Neither in medicine, nor in law, government, or the social sciences can there be comfort in the old saying, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
How to Mark a Book
Mortimer J. Adler
1 You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade you to “write between the lines.” Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading
2 You shouldn’t mark up a book which isn’t yours. Librarians (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, and you should. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of marking books, you will have to buy them.
3 There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher’s icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any good.
4 There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and best-sellers — unread, untouched. (This individual owns wood pulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books — a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many — every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)
5 Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? Of course not. I’d no more scribble all over a first edition of “Paradise Lost” than I’d give my baby a set of crayons and an original Rembrandt! I wouldn’t mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a statue. If your respect for magnificent binding or printing gets in the way, buy yourself a cheap edition and pay your respects to the author.
6 Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it keeps you awake. (And I don’t mean merely conscious; I mean wide awake.) In the second place, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually the thought-through book. Finally, writing helps you remember the thoughts you had, or the thoughts the author expressed. Let me develop these three points.
7 If reading is to accomplish anything more than passing time, it must be active.
8 You can’t let your eyes glide across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding of what you have read. Now an ordinary piece of light fiction, like, say, “Gone with the Wind”, doesn’t require the most active kind of reading. The books you read for pleasure can be read in a state of relaxation, and nothing is lost. But a great book, rich in ideas and beauty, a book that raises and tries to answer great fundamental questions, demands the most active reading of which you are capable. You don’t absorb the ideas of John Dewey the way you absorb the crooning of Mr. Vallee. You have to reach for them. That you cannot do while you’re asleep.
9 If, when you’ve finished reading a book, the pages are filled with your notes, you know that you read actively. The most famous active reader of great books I know is President Hutchins, of the University of Chicago. He also has the hardest schedule of business activities of any man I know. He invariably reads with a pencil, and sometimes, when he picks up a book and pencil in the evening, he finds himself, instead of making intelligent notes, drawing what he calls “caviar factories” on the margins. When that happens, he puts the book down. He knows he’s too tired to read, and he’s just wasting time.
10 But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions. You can pick up the book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement, disagreement, doubt and inquiry. It’s like resuming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off.
11 And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally you’ll have the proper humility as you approach him. But don’t let anybody tell you that a reader is supposed to be solely on the receiving end. Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn’t consist in being an empty receptacle. The learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. And marking a book is literally an expression of your differences, or agreements of opinion, with the author.
12 There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the way I do it:
13 1. Underlining: of major points, of important or forceful statements.
14 2. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
15 3. Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book.
16 4. Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
17 5. Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
18 6. Circling of key words or phrases.
19 7. Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the book. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.
20 The front end-papers are, to me, the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page, or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.
The Luncheon
W. Somerset Maugham
1 I caught sight of her at the play, and in answer to her beckoning I went over during the interval and sat down beside her. It was long since I had last seen her, and if someone had not mentioned her name I hardly think I would have recognised her. She addressed me brightly.
2 “Well, it’s many years since we first met. How time does fly! We’re none of us getting any younger. Do you remember the first time I saw you? You asked me to luncheon.”
3 Did I remember?
4 It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris. I had a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter overlooking a cemetery, and I was earning barely enough money to keep body and soul together. She had read a book of mine and had written to me about it. I answered, thanking her, and presently I received from her another letter saying that she was passing through Paris and would like to have a chat with me; but her time was limited, and the only free moment she had was on the following Thursday; she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I give her a little luncheon at Foyot’s afterwards? Foyot’s is a restaurant at which the French senators eat, and it was so far beyond my means that I had never even thought of going there. But I was flattered, and I was too young to have learned to say no to a woman.
(Few men, I may add, learn this until they are too old to make it of any consequence to a woman what they say.) I had eighty francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of the month, and a modest luncheon should not cost more than fifteen. If I cut out coffee for the next two weeks I could manage well enough.
5 I answered that I would meet my friend — by correspondence — at Foyot’s on Thursday at half past twelve. She was not so young as I expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive. She was, in fact, a woman of forty (a charming age, but not one that excites a sudden and devastating passion at first sight), and she gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose. She was talkative, but since she seemed inclined to talk about me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.
6 I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for the prices were a great deal higher than I had anticipated. But she reassured me.
7 “I never eat anything for luncheon,” she said.
8 “Oh, don’t say that!” I answered generously.
9 “I never eat more than one thing. I think people eat far too much nowadays. A little fish, perhaps. I wonder if they have any salmon.”
10 Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of fare, but I asked the waiter if there was any. Yes, a beautiful salmon had just come in, it was the first they had had. I ordered it for my guest. The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was being cooked.
11 “No,” she answered, “I never eat more than one thing. Unless you have a little caviare. I never mind caviare.”
12 My heart sank a little. I knew I could not afford caviare, but I could not very well tell her that. I told the waiter by all means to bring caviare. For myself I chose the cheapest dish on the menu and that was a mutton chop.
13 “I think you are unwise to eat meat,” she said. “I don’t know how you can expect to work after eating heavy things like chops. I don’t believe in overloading my stomach.”
14 Then came the question of drink.
15 “I never drink anything for luncheon,” she said.
16 “Neither do I,” I answered promptly.
17 “Except white wine,” she proceeded as though I had not spoken. “These French white wines are so light. They’re wonderful for the digestion.”
18 “What would you like?” I asked, hospitable still, but not exactly effusive.
19 She gave me a bright and amicable flash of her white teeth.
20 “My doctor won’t let me drink anything but champagne.”
21 I fancy I turned a trifle pale. I ordered half a bottle. I mentioned casually that my doctor had absolutely forbidden me to drink champagne.
22 “What are you going to drink, then?”
23 “Water.”
24 She ate the caviare and she ate the salmon. She talked gaily of art and literature and music. But I wondered what the bill would come to. When my mutton chop arrived she took me quite seriously to task.
25 “I see that you’re in the habit of eating a heavy luncheon. I’m sure it’s a mistake. Why don’t you follow my example and just eat one thing? I’m sure you’d feel ever so much better for it.”
26“I am only going to eat one thing,” I said, as the waiter came again with the bill of fare.
27 She waved him aside with an airy gesture.
28 “No, no, I never eat anything for luncheon. Just a bite, I never want more than that, and I eat that more as an excuse for conversation than anything else. I couldn’t possibly eat anything more unless they had some of those giant asparagus. I should be sorry to leave Paris without having some of them.”
29 My heart sank. I had seen them in the shops, and I knew that they were horribly expensive. My mouth had often watered at the sight of them.
30 “Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus,” I asked the waiter.
31 I tried with all my might to will him to say no. A happy smile spread over his broad, priest-like face, and he assured me that they had some so large, so splendid, so tender, that it was a marvel.
32 “I’m not in the least hungry,” my guest sighed, “but if you insist I don’t mind having some asparagus.”
33 I ordered them.
34 “Aren’t you going to have any?”
35 “No, I never eat asparagus.”
36 “I know there are people who don’t like them. The fact is, you ruin your taste by all the meat you eat.”
37 We waited for the asparagus to be cooked. Panic seized me. It was not a question now how much money I should have left over for the rest of the month, but whether I had enough to pay the bill. It would be embarrassing to find myself ten francs short and be obliged to borrow from my guest. I could not bring myself to do that. I knew exactly how much I had, and if the bill came to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand in my pocket and with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked. Of course, it would be awkward if she had not money enough either to pay the bill. Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I would come back and pay later.
38 The asparagus appeared. They were enormous, juicy, and appetising. I watched the wicked woman thrust them down her throat in large mouthfuls, and in my polite way I spoke about the condition of the drama in the Balkans. At last she finished.
39 “Coffee?” I said.
40 “Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee,” she answered.
41 I was past caring now, so I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream and coffee for her.
42 “You know, there’s one thing I thoroughly believe in,” she said, as she ate the ice-cream. “One should always get up from a meal feeling one could eat a little more.”
43 “Are you still hungry?” I asked faintly.
44 “Oh, no, I’m not hungry; you see, I don’t eat luncheon. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and then dinner, but I never eat more than one thing for luncheon. I was speaking for you.”
45 “Oh, I see!”
46 Then a terrible thing happened. While we were waiting for the coffee the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches. They had the blush of an innocent girl; they had the rich tone of an Italian landscape. But surely peaches were not in season then? Lord knew what they cost. I knew too — a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation, absentmindedly took one.
47 “You see, you’ve filled your stomach with a lot of meat” — my one miserable little chop — “and you can’t eat any more. But I’ve just had a snack and I shall enjoy a peach.”
48 The bill came, and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a quite inadequate tip. Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs I left for the waiter, and I knew that she thought me mean. But when I walked out of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and not a penny in my pocket.
49 “Follow my example,” she said as we shook hands, “and never eat more than one thing for luncheon.”
50 “I’ll do better than that,” I retorted. “I’ll eat nothing for dinner tonight.”
51 “Humorist!” she cried gaily, jumping into a cab. “You’re quite a humorist!”
52 But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency. Today she weighs twenty-one stone.
Why People Work
Leonard R. Sayles
1 Jobs and work do much more than most of us realize to provide happiness and contentment. We’re all used to thinking that work provides the material things of life — the goods and services that make possible our modern civilization. But we are much less conscious of the extent to which work provides the more intangible, but more crucial, psychological well-being that can make the difference between a full and an empty life.
2 Historically, work has been associated with slavery and sin and punishment. And in our own day we are used to hearing the traditional complaints: “I can’t wait for my vacation,” “I wish I could stay home today,” “My boss treats me poorly,” “I’ve got too much work to do and not enough time to do it.” Against this background, it may well come as a surprise to learn that not only psychologists but other behavioral scientists have come to accept the positive contribution of work to the individual’s happiness and sense of personal achievement. Work is more than a necessity for most human beings; it is the focus of their lives, the source of their identity and creativity.
3 Rather than a punishment or a burden, work is the opportunity to realize one’s potential. Many psychiatrists heading mental health clinics have observed its healing effect. A good many patients who feel depressed in clinics gain renewed self-confidence when gainfully employed and lose some, if not all, of their most acute symptoms. Increasingly, institutions dealing with mental health problems are establishing workshops wherein those too sick to get a job in “outside” industry can work, while every effort is exerted to arrange “real” jobs for those well enough to work outside.
4 And the reverse is true, too. For large numbers of people, the absence of work is harmful to their health. Retirement often brings many problems surrounding the “What do I do with myself?” question, even though there may be no financial cares. Large numbers of people regularly get headaches and other illnesses on weekends when they don’t have their jobs to go to, and must fend for themselves. It has been observed that unemployment, quite aside from exerting financial pressures, brings enormous psychological troubles and that many individuals deteriorate rapidly when jobless.
5 But why? Why should work be such a significant source of human satisfaction? A good share of the answer rests in the kind of pride that is stimulated by the job, by the activity of accomplishing.
Pride in Accomplishment
6 The human being longs for a sense of being accomplished, of being able to do things, with his hand, with his mind, with his will. Each of us wants to feel he or she has the ability to do something that is meaningful and that serves as a tribute to our inherent abilities.
7 It is easiest to see this in the craftsman who lovingly shapes some cheap material into an object that may be either useful or beautiful or both. You can see the carpenter or bricklayer stand aside and admire the product of his personal skill.
8 But even where there is no obvious end product that is solely attributable to one person’s skill, researchers have found that employees find pride in accomplishment. Our own research in hospitals suggests that even the housekeeping and laundry staffs take pride in the fact that in their own ways they are helping to cure sick people — and thus accomplishing a good deal.
9 We’re often misled by the complaints surrounding difficult work; deep down most people regard their own capacity to conquer the tough job as the mark of their own unique personality. Complaining is just part of working. After all, how else do you know who you are, except as you can demonstrate the ability of your mind to control your limbs and hands and words? You are, in significant measure, what you can do.
10 Some are deceived into thinking that people like to store up energy, to rest and save themselves as much as possible. Just the opposite. It is energy expenditure that is satisfying.
11 Just watch an employee who must deal with countless other people because his or her job is at some central point in a communications network: a salesman at a busy counter, a stock broker on the phone, a customer representative. They will tell you how much skill and experience it takes to answer countless questions and handle various kinds of personalities every hour of the day. Not everyone can interact with such persistence and over long hours, but those who do, pride themselves on a distinctive ability that contributes mightily to the running of the organization.
12 But work is more than accomplishment and pride in being able to command the job, because except for a few craftsmen and artists most work takes place “out in the world,” with and through other people
Esprit de corps
13 Perhaps an example will make the point:
14 I remember viewing a half dozen men in a chair factory whose job it was to bend several pieces of steel and attach them so that a folding chair would result. While there were ten or twelve of these “teams” that worked together, one in particular was known for its perfect coordination and lightning-like efforts. The men knew they were good. They would work in spurts for twenty or thirty minutes before taking a break — to show themselves, bystanders and other groups what it was to be superbly skilled and self-controlled, to be the best in the factory.
15 When I talked with them, each expressed enormous pride in being a part of the fastest, best team. And this sense of belonging to an accomplished work group is one of the distinctive satisfactions of the world of work.
16 One further word about work group satisfactions. Unlike many other aspects of life, relationships among people at work tend to be simpler, less complicated, somewhat less emotional. This is not to say there aren’t arguments and jealousies, but, on the whole, behavioral research discloses that human relations at work are just easier, perhaps because they are more regular and predictable and thus simpler to adjust to than the sporadic, the more intense and less regular relationships in the community. And the work group also gently pressures its members to learn how to adjust to one another so that the “rough edges” are worked off because people know they must do certain things with and through one another each day.
17 Beyond the team and the work group, there is the organization, whether it be company or hospital or university. The same pride in being part of a well-coordinated, successful unit is derived from being part of a larger collectivity. Working for a company that is thought of as being one of the best in the community can provide employees with both status and self-confidence. They assume, usually with good reason, that others regard them more highly, even envy them, and that they are more competent than the average because of this association with a “winner,” a prestigious institution. We in truth bask in the reflected glory of the institution, and we seek ways of asserting our membership so that others will know and can recognize our good fortune.
Warm-up questions
Unit 1
1. Is there an easy way to make money? If the anwer is yes, what is it?
2. Have you ever taken a part-time job to support yourself while studying? Was it easy work?
3. If you were short of cash and had to sell something, what would you sell? Would you sell your books?
Unit 5
1. Is it ever right to tell a lie?
2. Do you always want to be told the truth, no matter how unpleasant?
3. Are there any circumstamces in which it is acceptable for a doctor to tell a lie?
Unit 6
1. What does it mean to read actively?
2. Do you ever mark your books?
3. What do you think when you read a book that others have written?
Unit 7
1. Which is the restaurant you would most like to be invited to?
2. When handed the menu by your host, do you hesitate to choose expensive dishes or just pick whatever you like?
3. When a man and a woman go out for a meal together, should the man always pay?
Unit 10
1. Why do we need to work?
2. There is a saying that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But the opposite also true?
3. What are the things you personally look for in choosing a career?
Topics of Spoken English Test for 2ndGrade
1. Tell us something about your hometown.
2. What are your favorite books or films? Why do you enjoy them?
3 .Please try to comment on your college life since you have been here for almost 2 years.
4. Do you get along well with your roommates? What is your idea about the relationship in the dormitory?
5.Is it necessary for us to work? Try to give us some reasons why we should work.
6. What job you would like to take most? Why?
7. Do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend? What is your opinion about love?
8. How do you spend the weekends at the college?
9. What are the pros and cons of advertising?
10. Would you like to offer any suggestions to president of Changsha University about the food in the dining hall? What are they?
11. What are considered good manners both in the West and the East? Give us examples.
12 .Say something about Chinese festivals and western festivals.
13 .What, in your opinion, is the best solution to the problem of cheating in exams?
14. what are your views about the part-time job?
15. Can I have your opinions about the internet?
16. What are the environmental problems we face nowadays?
17. what can you do in environmental protection?
18. Could you tell us an embarrasing experinece?
19 .Is a hero different from a celebrity? What are the differences?
20 .If you were the monintor, how would design an activity in your class?
