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  3. One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s,is examining

One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s,is examining

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问题     One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s,is examining the ways in which office life has changed over the years. One obvious change makes people feel good about themselves: they no longer treat women as second-class citizens. But the other obvious change makes them feel a bit more uneasy: they have lost the art of enjoying themselves at work.
    The ad-men in those days enjoyed simple pleasures. They puffed away at their desks. They drank throughout the day. They had affairs with their colleagues. They socialised not in order to bond,but in order to get drunk. Nowadays many companies are obsessed with fun. Software firms in Silicon Valley have installed rock-climbing walls in their reception areas and put inflatable animals in their offices, Wal-Mart orders its cashiers to smile at all and sundry. The cult of fun has spread like some disgusting haemorrhagic disease.
    This cult of fun is driven by three of the most popular management fads of the moment: empowerment, engagement and creativity. Many companies pride themselves on devolving power to front-line workers. But surveys show that only 20% of workers are "fully engaged with their job". Even fewer are creative. Managers hope that " fun" will magically make workers more engaged and creative. But the problem is that as soon as fun becomes part of a corporate strategy it ceases to be fun and becomes its opposite—at best an empty shell and at worst a tiresome imposition.
    The most unpleasant thing about the fashion for fun is that it is mixed with a large dose of pressure. Boston Pizza encourages workers to send" golden bananas "to colleagues who are "having fun while being the best". Behind the"fun"there often lurks some crude management thinking: a desire to brand the company as better than its rivals, or a plan to boost productivity through team-building. Twitter even boasts that it has "worked hard to create an environment that spawns productivity and happiness".
    While imposing fake fun on their employees, companies are battling against the real thing. Many force smokers to huddle outside like furtive criminals. Few allow their employees to drink at lunch time, let alone earlier in the day. A regiment of busybodies—from lawyers to human resources functionaries—is waging war on office romance, particularly between people of different ranks.
    The merchants of fake fun have met some resistance. When Wal-Mart tried to impose alien rules on its German staff—such as compulsory smiling and a ban on affairs with coworkers—it touched off a guerrilla war that ended only when the supermarket chain announced it was pulling out of Germany in 2006. But such victories are rare. For most wage slaves forced to pretend they are having fun at work, the only relief is to poke fun at their tormentors. Mad Men reminds people of a world they have lost—a world where bosses did not think that" fun" was a management tool and where employees could happily quaff Scotch at noon. Cheers to that.
In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by______.
选项 A、explaining a phenomenon
B、justifying an assumption
C、posing an argument
D、making a contrast
答案D
解析 本题就引入主题的方式提问。第一段首先引入了电视剧《广告达人》的例子：观赏《广告达人》的众多乐趣之一就是能够看到自从20世纪60年代以来办公室发生的一些变化，有好的变化也有坏的变化。本文要讨论的是一个不太好的变化，就是办公室里快乐的艺术已经消走了。第二段通过列举20世纪60年代的快乐和现在办公室里的一些娱乐项目，想要达到的目的是对比。过去的快乐单纯，现在的快乐不再是自发的而是人为制造出来的。由此判断[D]正确。[B]错误，文中并没有先提出一种假设，然后证明这一假设。[C]迷惑性较强，posing anargument，意思是提出一种争论，但是本文开头并没有提出争论，只是将两个年代进行了对比。[A]选项，开篇只是提出了一个话题，还没有解释说明，因此错误。
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