The Company in Which I Work

by Joseph Heller

课后练习 (Exercises on the text)

A. Answer the following questions on the text.

1. In the company, everyone is afraid of al least one person.

2. Because their position is the lowest.

3. Because they fear that they may, start doing worse and they

should begin doing better.

4. They live and work under pressure that is extraordinary.

5. Yes.

6. Because first their salaries are small, arid they know they will

not have much trouble finding jobs paying just as little in other

companies if they lose their jobs here.

7. They are not expected to change reality, but merely to find it if

they can and suggest ingenious ways of disguising it.

8. He is bored with his work very often now.

9. On days when he's especially melancholy, he began constructing

tables of organization … classifying people in the company on the

basis of envy, hope, fear, ambition, frustration, rivalry, hatred,

or disappointment.

10. The passage is a satire on the company's ruining the normal human

feelings and on the sad fact that people scramble for power and

profit at the cost of sacrificing their dignity.

B. Translate the following into Chinese.

1．他们召开会议，研究该提升谁，别人准备并发布的声明上也要署上他们的名 字。

2．他不时地让我清楚一个事实，即他希望我的部门所出的成果在显示给其他部门 之前先给他看看。

3．把统计数字复印，分发，这种做法的结果是公司每个部门的每个销售办公室的 推销员在任何时期内业绩的好坏都不断地处于公众的审查和评论之中。

4．纪律和指令激励并驱使他们。

5．他们的经费很少，因为不再允许他们承担大的项目。

6．不仅推销员认为（我们所做的是重要的），而且那些精明的。能力强的高级管 理层的人员也这样认为。

7．做令人厌烦的事情是否比把令人厌烦的事情交给别人去做而自己却无所事事更 令人厌烦呢？这真是一个要做出决定的问题。

8．我时常感到我被利用只是因为我被要求去做能付我工资的工作。

C. Fill in the blanks in each sentence with the best word or expression

from the box below, changing its from when necessary.

1. having fallen victim to

2. with honors

3. have trouble

4. was held to blame

5. credited with

6. regardless of

7. squandered

8. motivated