Unit5 The Company Man
1.He worked himlf to death, finally and precily, at 3: Sunday morning.
2.The obituary didn’t say that, of cour. It said that he died of a coronary thrombosis — I think that was it — but everyone among his friends and acquaintances knew it instantly. He was a perfect Type A2, a workaholic, a classic, they said to each other and shook their heads — and thought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived.
3.This man who worked himlf to death finally and precily at 3: Sunday morning — on his day off — was fifty-one years old and a vice-president. He was, however, one of six vice-presidents, and one of three who might conceivably — if the president died or retired soon enough — have moved to the top spot. Phil knew that.
4.He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night, during a time when his own company had begun the four-day week for everyone but the executives. He worked like the Important People3. He had no outside “extracurricular interests,” unless, of cour,
you think about a monthly golf game that way. To Phil, it was work. He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was, of cour, overweight, by 20 or 25 pounds. He thought it was okay, though, becau he didn’t smoke.
5.On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports jacket to the office instead of a suit, becau it was the weekend.
6.He had a lot of people working for him, maybe sixty, and most of them liked him most of the time. Three of them will be riously considered for his job. The obituary didn’t mention that.
7.But it did list his “survivors” quite accurately. He is survived by his wife, Helen, forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular marketable skills, who worked in an office before marrying and mothering. She had, according to her daughter, given up trying to compete with his work years ago, when the children were small. A company friend said, “I know how much you will miss him.” And she answered, “I already have.”
8.“Missing him all the years,” she must have given up part of herlf which had cared too much for the man. She would be “well taken care of.”
9.His “dearly beloved” eldest of the “dearly beloved” children is a hard-working executive in a manufacturing firm down South. In the day and a half before the funeral, he went around the neighborhood rearching his father, asking the neighbors what he was like. They were embarrasd.
10.His cond child is a girl, who is twenty-four and newly married. She lives near her mother and they are clo, but whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving somewhere, they had nothing to say to each other.
11.The youngest is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate who has spent the last couple of years, like a lot of his friends, doing enough odd jobs to stay in grass and food4. He was the one who tried to grab at his father, and tried to mean enough to him to keep the man at home. He was his father’s favorite. Over the last two years, Phil stayed up nights worrying about the boy.
12.The boy once said, “My father and I only board here5.”
13.At the funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-eight-year-old widow that the fifty-one-year-old decead had meant much to the company and would be misd and would be hard to replace. The widow didn’t look him in the eye. She was afraid he would read her bitterness and, after all, she would need him to straighten out the finances — the stock options6 and all that.
14.Phil was overweight and nervous and worked too hard. If he wasn’t at the office he was worried about it. Phil was a Type A, a heart-attack natural. You could have picked him out in a minute from a lineup.
15.So when he finally worked himlf to death, at precily 3: Sunday morning, no one was really surprid.
16.By 5: the afternoon of the funeral, the company president had begun, discreetly of cour, with care and taste, to make inquiries about his replacement. One of three men. He asked around: “Who’s been working the hardest?”
公司人
1.他终于在星期天凌晨三点整因过度劳累而离开人世。
2.当然，讣告上没有提及这一点。讣告说他死于冠状动脉血栓形成——我认为这就是死因——但是，他所有的朋友和熟人都马上明白是怎么回事。他们议论道，他是十足的A型行为者，一个工作狂，一个典型的工作狂，他们边说边摇头，他们还花了五到十分钟的时间想了想自己的生活方式。
3.这位最终于星期天——他的休息日——凌晨三点整累死的人是位公司副总裁，时年五十一岁。不过他是六位副总裁之一，如果总裁去世够早或退休够早的话，他本是有望当第一把手的三位人选之一。菲尔清楚这一点。
4.他一周工作六天，其中五天要工作到晚上八、九点钟。而公司员工除领导层外已经开始实行每周四天工作制了。他像重要人物一样工作。他在外面没有“本职以外的爱好”，当然，除非你认为每月一次的打高尔夫球也算的话。但是，对于菲尔来说，这也是工作。他总是在办公桌旁吃鸡蛋沙拉三明治，自然啦，他超重了，超出二十或二十五磅。不过他认为没关系，因为他不抽烟。
5.每周六菲尔身着运动夹克衫去上班。不穿西装，因为这是周末。
6.他手下有不少人，约六十名。大部分人多半时间都喜欢他。其中三人被认真考虑当作接他班的人选。讣告上没有提及这点。
7.但是讣告上的确颇为准确地列出了他的“遗嘱”，他的遗孀海伦，四十八岁，一个好女人，但没有什么适合市场需求的技能，结婚生育之前曾在办公室工作。据她女儿说，多年前，孩子们还小的时候，她就决定放弃与丈夫的工作竞争了。一位公司朋友说：“我知道你将会多么思念他。”她回答道：“我早就思念他了。”
8.“这么多年来一直思念着他”，她一定是牺牲了自己，竭尽全力照顾此公。她会得到“很好照顾的”。
9.他“深爱的”子女中的“深爱的”大儿子是南方的一家制造公司的经理，工作十分努力。在葬礼前一天半，他走访了街坊邻里，向他们打听父亲是怎样的一个人，他们感到很尴尬。
