厦门大学统计夏令营-厦门大学统计夏令营
学习资料
Work
in
corporate
America
1
It
is
not
surprising
that
modern
children
tend
to
look
blank
and
dispirited
when informed that they will someday
have to
The problem is that they cannot
visualize
what work is in corporate America.
2 Not so long ago, when a
parent said he was off to work, the child knew
very well what was about to happen. His
parent was going to make something or
fix something. The parent could take
his
offspring
to his place of business
and let him watch while he
repaired a
buggy
or built a table.
3 When
a
child
asked,
kind
of
work
do
you
do,
Daddy?
his
father
could
answer in terms that a child could come
to
grips
with, such as
engines
4 Well, a few
fathers still fix steam engines and build tables,
but most
do not. Nowadays, most fathers
sit in glass buildings doing things that are
absolutely
incomprehensible
to
children.
The
answers
they
give
when
asked,
kind
of
work
do you do, Daddy?
are likely to
be
utterly
mystifying
to a
child.
5
data processor
.
in
public relat ions
.
analyst
.
nonse
nse to a child. How can he possibly
envision
anyone analyzing a system
or researching a market?
6
Even grown men who do market research have trouble
visualizing what a
public relations man
does with his day, and it is a safe bet that the
average
systems analyst is as
baffled
about what a space
salesman
does at the shop as
the average space salesman is about the
tools needed to analyze a system.
7
In
the
common
everyday
job,
nothing
is
made
any
more.
Things
are
now
made
by machines.
Very little is repaired. The machines that make
things make them
in such a fashion that
they will quickly fall apart in such a way that
repairs
will
be
prohibitively
expensive.
Thus
the
buyer
is
encouraged
to
throw
the
thing
away and buy a
new one. In effect, the machines are making junk.
8 The
handful
of people
remotely
associated with these machines can, of
course,
tell
their
inquisitive
children
makes
junk
Most
of
the
workforce,
however, is too
remote from junk production to sense any
contribution
to the
industry. What do these people do?
9 Consider
the
typical
12-story
glass
building
in
the
typical
American
city.
Nothing
is
being
made
in
this
building
and
nothing
is
being
repaired,
including
精品文档
学习资料
the building itself. Constructed as a
piece of junk, the building will be
discarded
when
it
wears
out,
and
another
piece
of
junk
will
be
set
in
its
place.
10 Still, the building
is filled with people who think of themselves as
working. At any given moment during the
day perhaps one-third of them will be
talking into telephones. Most of these
conversations will be about paper, for
paper is what occupies nearly everyone
in this building.
11 Some jobs in
the building require men to fill paper with words.
There
are persons who type neatly on
paper and persons who read paper and
jot
notes
in the
margins
. Some persons make copies of paper and other persons deliver
paper.
There are persons who file paper and persons who
unfile paper.
12 Some persons mail
paper. Some persons telephone other persons and
ask
that paper be sent to them. Others
telephone to
ascertain
the
whereabouts
of
paper.
Some persons
confer
about paper. In the
grandest
offices, men approve
of some paper and
disapprove
of other paper.
13 The
elevators
are
filled
throughout
the
day
with
young
men
carrying
paper
from
floor
to
floor
and
with
vital
men
carrying
paper
to
be
discussed
with
other
vital men.
14 What is a child to make of all
this? His father may be so
eminent
that
he lunches with other men about
paper. Suppose he brings his son to work to
give
the
boy
some
idea
of
what
work
is
all
about.
What
does
the
boy
see
happening?
15 His father
calls for paper. He reads paper. Perhaps he
scowls
at paper.
Perhaps
he
makes an angry
red mark on paper. He telephones
another man
and says
they had better lunch over paper.
16 At lunch they talk about paper.
Back at the office, the father orders
the paper retyped and reproduced in
quintuplicate
, and then sent to another
man for comparison with paper
that was reproduced in
triplicate
last year.
17 Imagine his poor son
afterwards
mulling
over the mysteries of work with
a friend, who
asks him,
beats
me,
observant
. Or if he is,
has to do with making junk, I think.
Same as everybody else.
精品文档