首页
登录
职称英语
Start at the beginning: Civil Service clerk, temporary, at the local Ministr
Start at the beginning: Civil Service clerk, temporary, at the local Ministr
游客
2024-08-07
25
管理
问题
Start at the beginning: Civil Service clerk, temporary, at the local Ministry of Works depot in my hometown, can’t get any lower than that. At the base of the bureaucratic pyramid, buried alive in fact, the temporary clerk is the navy of the Civil Service, without status or security. When I took the job I’d only worked in factories, and so I was a bit in awe of the office world I was about to enter. As an apprentice, queuing in the spotless corridor on Thursday outside the wage windows, peering in at the comparative purity of desks and paper and slick, dandified staff, you got a queer, dizzy sensation. My brother was a clerk himself, at the Council House, but I never connected him with this Thursday vision.
On my first day as a clerk, going down the street with my brother, I confessed how nervous I was. "Listen, " he said, "you can write your name, can’t you? You can add up? Then you can be a clerk. "
It was true. The depot was a big old house near the city centre, with the offices upstairs. My boss had a room at the front to himself, and behind him was a door leading to my den, which contained three others. This boss, a big, bumbling, embarrassed man, addressed us all with the "Mr. " fixed firmly between, as if to maintain his distance. Everyone accepted his remoteness as inevitable, something which struck me as weird from the beginning, especially as you had to go to and fro behind his chair to the outer door every time you went anywhere. The boss sat through it all encased in silence and dignity, like an Under Secretary.
Holed up in the back room it was snug and at first I liked it, till the novelty wore off and the chronic, stagnant boredom began to take over. An old man, the only other temporary, made tea in the comer where he sat, and he did all the menial labouring jobs, stamping and numbering timesheets, sorting vouchers: so at first I helped him. The other two did the more skilled entering and balancing, working on wage sheets and other mysteries I never penetrated. It seemed to culminate, their activity, in the grand climax of pay-day, which was Friday. Then the boss, for an hour or so, came out of his fastness and was nearly human. He would march in smiling with the box stuffed full of money, and together they would count and parcel it. Out went the box again, stuffed with pay envelopes.
The old man was treated with amiable contempt by the established clerks, who asserted their superiority now and again, and, as the old man was deaf, kept up a running commentary, half fun and half malice, which they evidently found necessary to break the monotony. Before long I needed it as much as they did. The worst aspect of a clerk’s existence was being rubbed into me : it’s how prison must be. At first you don’t even notice, then it starts to bite in. Because of the terrible limitation of your physical freedom--chained to a desk is right--you are soon forced to make your own amusements in order to make life bearable. You have to liven it up. And with the construction comes inevitably an undertow of bitterness and all kinds of petty behaviour arise out of the rubbing frustration, the enforced closeness. Plenty of it is malicious.
Another clerical job, at a builder’s merchants, was redeemed to some extent by the fact that you were actually in the warehouse, among storemen, sales reps, and all the tangible, fascinating paraphernalia of the trade. Racks and bins and lofts stacked with it. One occupational hazard facing a clerk is always the sense of futility he struggles against, or is more often just overwhelmed by. Unlike even the humblest worker on a production line, he doesn’t produce anything. He battles with phantoms, abstracts ;runs in a paper chase that goes on year after year, and seems utterly pointless. How can there be anything else other than boredom in it for him? [br] How many people shared an office room with the writer?
选项
答案
Three.
解析
(由第三段第二句“My boss had a room at the front to himself, and behind him was a door leading to my den, which contained three others”,可知笔者与其他三个人共用一个办公室。)
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3710045.html
相关试题推荐
Atthebeginningtherewereonly______statesintheUnitedStatesofAmerica.__
SouthKorea’slargestmobilephoneoperatoristoofferusersanewservicethat
FastBAA’sHeathrowExpressistherevolutionarynon-stoptrainservicethat
FastBAA’sHeathrowExpressistherevolutionarynon-stoptrainservicethat
WhatisMalaysia’sEducationMinistrytryingtodo?[originaltext]Theyear2020
Gary:Lily,quick.Ifyoudon’thurry,we’regoingtomissthebeginningofthe
ThesamewordcanbeaddedtotheendofGRASSandthebeginningofSCAPEtofor
Inmanycountriesthereisafixedchargeforpersonalservices.Acertainp
Inmanycountriesthereisafixedchargeforpersonalservices.Acertainp
Inmanycountriesthereisafixedchargeforpersonalservices.Acertainp
随机试题
What’sPeterJohnson’spositioninthecompany?Heisthe______Manager.[br][
PeopleofBurlingtonarebeingdisturbedbythesoundofbells.Fourstudent
图书变动成本与固定成本的区别主要在于( )。A.变动成本受市场价格影响,固定成
参与非特异性免疫作用的细胞是A.CDTh1细胞 B.CDTh2细胞 C.γδ
科特尔和赫斯科特将组织文化划分为灵活适应型、强力型及()。A.策略合理型 B.
下列方法中,不用于治疗AMD的是A.冷凝 B.激光光凝 C.光动力疗法 D
某混凝土试块强度值不满足规范要求,但经法定检测单位对混凝土实体强度经过法定检测后
以下几种基金中,管理费率最低的是()。A:股票基金B:债券基金C:认股权证基
产品方案需要在()的基础上形成。A.产品比较 B.产品定价 C.产品调查
某坝是超静定结构,有较强的超载能力,受温度的变化和坝肩位移的影响较大,这种坝是(
最新回复
(
0
)