第四单元 Work n Corporate America.doc

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 “go to work and make a living”. 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, “What kind of work do you do, Daddy?” his father could answer in terms that a child could come to grips with, such as “I fix steam engines” or “I make horse collars”. 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, “What kind of work do you do, Daddy?” are likely to be utterly mystifying to a child. 5 “I sell space.” “I do market research.” “I am a data processor.” “I am in public relations.” “I am a systems analyst.” Such explanations must seem nonsense 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