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1984年，一天快中午时,我前往旧金山吃午饭，经过一个收费站，听到很大的音乐声，像是在开舞会。我环顾四周，其他车都没有开窗，也没有很吵的卡车。收费亭里面，有个人在跳舞。 “你在干什么？”我问。 “我正在开舞会，”他说。 "那其他人呢？”我看看其他的收费亭。 他说:“你觉得他们像什么？”他指着一排收费亭。 “他们看上去像……收费亭。那你觉得他们像什么？” 他说像竖着的棺材。每天早晨8点30分，活生生的人进去了。然后整整8个小时他们将失去活力。4:点半时，他们像麻风病人一样重获新生回到家。8小时里，大脑僵硬如同行尸走肉，重复同样的动作。” 我很惊讶。这个家伙领悟出一套哲学,关于工作的理论。16个工作，而有17个人在同样的情况下，找到了一条活路。我禁不住问：“这工作对你不一样？你过得很不错。”他看看我：“我就知道你要问这个问题。我不清楚为什么我的工乍很无聊。我有工作间，四面都装着玻璃。我可以看见金门大桥。西部一半的旅游景点都在这里……我只是每天来这里练习跳舞而已。” A Place to Stand Late one morning in 1984，headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward a ith. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound struck. I looked at the tollbooth. Inside it, the man was dancing. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m having a party,” he said. “What about the rest of the people?” I looked at the other toll booths. He said, “What do those look like to you?” He pointed down the row of tollbooths. “They look like... tollbooths. What do they look like to you?” He said, “vertical coffins. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die fjight hours. At 4:30，like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home. For et hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through the motions.，’ I was amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology about his job. Sen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, fled out a way to live. I could not help asking the next question: “Why is it different for you? You're having a good time.” He looked at me. “I knew you were going to ask that. I don’t’t understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, 53 on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, and the Berkeley hills, Halt the Western world vacations here... and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing.” |
