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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.
The restriction on smoking and drinking reflects company’ s______.
选项 A、contradiction in words and action
B、ignorance of employees’ true happiness
C、violation of basic human rights
D、inflexibility in managing staff
答案B
解析 文中多次出现在办公室抽烟喝酒的问题。第二段作者以羡慕的口吻写道：20世纪60年代的广告达人们能够随心所欲地在办公桌前抽烟，可以不分时候不管场合把酒言欢。第五段是与第二段的对比，现在的企业在强加给员工快乐的同时，却不允许员工享受很多他们心目中真正的乐趣，不允许在办公室吸烟喝酒，甚至不允许发生办公室恋情。前后对比，不难看出企业这种南辕北辙的做法是因为他们不了解真正能给员工带来快乐的是什么，只是一味地从自身的利益出发。因此[B]正确。[A]言行不一致，文中公司口头上表达的意思是希望员工能够幸福，同样也做了很多自以为能够给员工带来幸福的事情，因此并不存在言行不一致的问题。文中并未将员工幸福和人权画等号，因此违反了基本人权，无从谈起。[C]错误。第四段讨论的出发点并不是想要追责公司管理制度上的问题，而是想要和第三段结合起来反映公司在对“快乐”一词的理解上存在的偏差，因此[D]偏离了第四段讨论的主题。
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