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我们为什么讨厌工作?

所属教程:职场人生

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2017年02月07日

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The boss of a friend recently gathered all his charges together for a ritual new year pep talk. “Each of you has the right to love your job,” he told them.

最近,我一个朋友的老板对其所有下属发表了一番鼓舞士气的新年致辞。“你们每人都有权热爱本职工作,”他对部下们说。

She thought this terrific and looked a bit dashed when I pointed out it was both dangerous and unrealistic. No one has the right to love their jobs. Not only that, most people hate them.

我的朋友觉得这话很可怕,看上去有点被雷到了,我则指出这话既危险又不切实际。没谁“有权”热爱本职工作。不仅如此,大部分人都讨厌工作。

If you type into Google “my job is —” the search engine predicts the way your sentence is going: “so boring” or “making me suicidal” or “ making me miserable”. If you start “my boss is —”, Google offers: “lazy”, “ is bullying me” or (my favourite) “a cow”. Even more alarming, if you type “my job is stimulating”, it assumes you have made a typo and suggests what you must have meant “not stimulating”.

如果你在谷歌(Google)上输入“我的工作——”,谷歌就会联想出你要说的是:“巨无聊”或“让我想死”或“让我郁闷”。如果以“我的老板——”开头,谷歌则会奉上:“是懒货”,“一直虐我”或(我最喜欢这个)“神烦”。更惊人的是,如果你输入“我的工作很刺激”,谷歌就会猜你是不是打错了,还会提示你想说的是不是“不刺激”。

The internet has a way of whipping up bad feeling. Yet in this case workplace disaffection is real and growing. We are in the middle of what Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor at UCL in London, calls an “epidemic of disengagement”. Most surveys show less than a third of workers care for their jobs, and the long-term trend is getting worse. In the UK there is some evidence we like our jobs a good deal less than we did in the 1960s.

互联网惯于助长负面情绪。但职场中人的不满却真的存在并还在与日俱增。我们正处于伦敦大学学院(UCL)教授托马斯•卡莫洛-普雷姆兹克(Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic)所说的“厌恶工作的流行期”。多数调查显示,喜欢自己工作的员工不足三分之一,而且从长远看来情况还会更糟。在英国,有些迹象表明,人们远没有1960年代那会儿那么喜欢自己的工作了。

This is most peculiar. I was not in the workforce in the 1960s. But I was in the 1980s, and can confirm things are better than they were back then. When I joined the City pre-Big Bang, it was stuffed with upper-class men in pinstripes, many of whom were astonishingly dim. Jobs were still for life, so if you landed one you did not like, you were trapped. Promotions took ages, and even then were largely based on Buggins’ turn and who you played golf with. Bullying was so normal no one thought to complain. Office buildings were dingy, dirty and uncomfortable. There were no such thing as ergonomic chairs, and you were likely to get lung cancer from all the passive smoking.

这就怪了。1960年代我还没踏进职场。可1980年代我已经工作了,而且我敢肯定现在的情况比那时要好。我是在“金融大爆炸”(Big Bang,即1986年伦敦金融城结构大改革)之前来伦敦金融城工作的,那会儿金融城里满是穿细条纹西装的上流男士,他们好多人都非常不开心。那时候工作是为了生计,所以如果没找到心仪的工作,你就得捱着。晋升更是百年一遇,就算碰上了也多半是因为终于轮到你了,再就是你跟谁打过高尔夫。被老板虐更是家常便饭,谁也没想过发牢骚。办公楼里阴森森的,又脏又难受。压根没有什么符合人体工学的椅子,而且你还很可能因为饱吸二手烟而得上肺癌。

Now, not only are offices bright and beautiful, we do not even have to go to them if we do not feel like it — we can work at home instead. Bosses have been taught not to shout. There are gyms and free fruit. And if you happen to be a woman, things have improved beyond recognition. In the 1960s you were limited to filing and shorthand, while now (at least in theory) you can run the show. So why are we so miserable?

如今,不仅办公环境明亮又美观,而且如果我们不喜欢甚至可以不去——在家办公也行。老板们已被告诫不要大喊大叫。还有健身房和免费水果可以享用。如果你是一名女性,境遇更是今非昔比。1960年代,你只能整理整理文档以及做做速记,然而现在(至少在理论上)你能够执掌大权。所以为什么我们还这么郁闷?

The most common reason is having a bad manager. But this is a puzzle as managers are surely less hopeless now than they were half a century ago.

最常见的理由是有一个差劲的领导。但这一点很让人费解,因为今天的领导们绝对没有半个世纪以前那么无能。

All those MBA degrees, mentoring, coaching and training — none of which existed 50 years ago — cannot have been entirely in vain.

所有那些MBA学位、职业指导、辅导还有培训——50年前一个都见不着——不可能全都没用。

Part of our modern disaffection may be due to job hopping. Because we can leave at the drop of a hat, we are less likely to make a go of wherever we are. If everyone is constantly coming and going, no one ever feels secure or has any sense of belonging.

如今我们不满的部分原因可能在于跳槽。因为我们一言不合就能拍屁股走人,所以就不太可能在一个地方好好干。如果人人都频繁跳槽,那谁也没法得到安全感或是归属感。

But the biggest reason for unhappiness is that we expect too much. Office jobs may have improved, but our expectations have far outstripped them. Better education has not helped. People with university degrees tend to dislike their jobs more than people without them. And so as more people have degrees, unhappiness rises. As we march up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is harder to enjoy the view from the top.

然而最令我们不开心的是我们期望得太多。办公室工作也许改善了,但我们的期望值却早已远远超越了这些。更好的教育水平也无济于事。有大学学历的人比没有大学学历的人更容易对工作产生不满。所以随着更多的人拥有学历,不满也日益增长。在马斯洛需求层次理论(Maslow's hierarchy of needs)的需求层次中,我们爬得越高,就越难以被取悦。

Things are made worse by the well-meaning actions of the companies themselves. Faced with a disaffected workforce, they insist it is vital for us to be happy. They trumpet their values. They tell us they are changing the world. They demand we are all not merely engaged but passionately so. They encourage us to volunteer at good work — all in the name of meaning.

企业自身出于善意的举措令情况变得更糟。面对不满的员工,他们坚信快乐对我们至关重要。他们宣扬自己的价值观,告诉我们他们正在改变世界。他们要求我们不仅要投入工作而且还得充满激情地投入。他们鼓励我们自愿努力工作——一切都是以意义的名义。

The result is not happiness. According to new research from Sussex university, when done crassly this sort of thing makes workers unhappier and more disenchanted than they were before.

结果却并没有带来快乐。萨塞克斯大学(Sussex University)一项新的研究表明,这种事情如果是简单粗暴地做出来,员工会比以往更加不快和幻灭。

The corporate obsession with happiness is part of the cause of our unhappiness. When everyone around you is claiming to feel passion or to have found meaning, or when managers say you have a right to love what you do, it is only natural — at the smallest hint of boredom or after a minor run-in with a manager — to conclude that your job makes you suicidal and your boss is a cow.

企业对快乐的热衷也是我们不开心的一部分原因。当周围的人都说自己充满热情或找到了生命意义,或者当领导们说你有权爱自己的工作,自然而然地,只要你觉得有一点点厌烦或是跟领导有了点小摩擦后,你就会觉得工作让你想死,还有老板真是神烦。
 


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