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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.
It can be inferred from the text that ad-men in 1960s are more happy than office workers today mainly because______.
选项 A、they are free to enjoy simple and spontaneous fun
B、they are empowered to make individual decisions
C、they are not forced to boost creavitivity and productivity
D、they can take a relief to poke fun at their boss
答案A
解析 这一道推理引申题牵涉对全文主旨内容的理解。开篇即提出了20世纪60年代的广告达人们比现在的员工快乐，核心的原因应该是他们能够享受简单而又自发的快乐。[A]正确，要注意这里更强调“自发”这个词，与“强制”相对。[B]设置了干扰词，empower，这个词在文中第三段第一句中就提到过。20世纪60年代的广告人确实有权做很多现在的员工不能做的事情，比如在办公室抽烟，在午餐时间喝酒，但是“被赋权做出个人的选择”这一描述过于笼统，现在的员工也可能拥有很多20世纪60年代的广告人没有享受的权利。[C]中出现了干扰词“创造力”和“生产力”，这些词在第三段和第四段都提到过，这两段都暗示了“快乐崇拜”的企业理念背后是管理者希望提高生产力的愿望，虽然现在的员工确实因为意识到了这一点而变得不那么快乐，但是反过来说60年代的人更快乐是因为他们没有被迫去提高创造力和生产力，这种说法并不能成立。[D]设置干扰词poke fun at their boss，在最后一段，原文说现在的员工只能通过开开老板玩笑来抒发心中的郁闷，并不是指60年代的广告人，因此这里是偷梁换柱。
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