寧可做擦鞋匠 不去做銀行家
Last Thursday, for the first time in my life, I had my shoes shined. I sat on a stool outside St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside and a man crouched at my feet and got busy with the Kiwi polish, rags and brushes.
上週四，我有生以來第一次請人擦鞋。我坐在切普賽街聖瑪麗勒波教堂(St Mary-le-Bow)外面的一個凳子上，一位男子蹲在我腳邊，用奇偉(Kiwi)鞋油、擦鞋布和鞋刷忙碌起來。It had never occurred to me to do such a thing before. This is partly because I don’t notice scuffed shoes until they are shamefully tatty, when I generally turn to and polish them myself. More than that, there is something disagreeable about the idea of someone prostrating themselves at your feet.
以前我從沒想過這麼做。這在一定程度上是因爲除非鞋子邋遢得丟人了，否則我是不會注意到鞋子有磨損的，而且那時我一般會自己擦鞋。更主要的原因是，我對於別人蹲在腳下爲我服務還是有些介懷的。
When I worked on Wall Street in the early 1980s, I remember seeing lines of men in suits sitting on high chairs loftily reading the Wall Street Journal while men in dirty aprons toiled away below them. My liberal north London soul winced at the sight.
上世紀80年代初，在華爾街工作的我看到很多西裝革履的男士坐在高椅上高傲地讀着《華爾街日報》(Wall Street Journal)，而身穿髒圍裙的擦鞋匠在他們腳下賣力工作。我這顆北倫敦的自由心靈真不願意看到這一幕。
But then last week a colleague told me he had just had his shoes shined by a man who struck him as one of the most contented workers he’d ever met. Intrigued, I decided to pay him a visit.
但上週，一位同事告訴我，剛剛給他擦鞋的人是他遇到的最心滿意足的工作者之一。對此好奇的我決定前去拜訪。Earlier that week I had been at a formal dinner and sat next to a woman who held down a senior job in a large City bank. I asked her if she liked being a banker — and got an earful of disillusionment and misery. Anyone planning on a career in financial services, she said, was quite mad. First, the weight of regulation was making life impossible. Then there was the politics, and the endless need to show off. Sexism was endemic. And bureaucracy and the culture of back covering were so entrenched that change was impossible. She had made enough money in her two decades in the job never to have to work again, and was feeling gleeful at having just handed in her notice.
當週早些時候，我出席過一次正式的餐會，在我旁邊就坐的一位女性辭去了倫敦金融城(City)一家大銀行的高級職位。我問她是否喜歡銀行家這份工作，結果我聽到的是很多的失望和不愉快。她說道，任何一位計劃在金融服務業大展宏圖的人都非常瘋狂。首先，嚴格的監管讓業務變得難上加難。接下來還有政治，還需要無休止地炫耀。性別歧視很普遍。官僚作風和掩蓋文化非常根深蒂固，改革幾乎是不可能的。工作了20年，她賺夠了錢，永遠不需要再工作了，剛剛很高興地遞交了辭呈。At around the time she joined her bank, a young French graduate turned up at a church barely 100 yards from the glass and marble headquarters where she worked, and sought permission to shine shoes in its courtyard. For nearly 20 years he has turned up at 11.30am each day, put up a green umbrella, and applied himself to the shoe leather of the City lunch- break crowd.
大約在她加入她所在的銀行時，一位年輕的法國畢業生出現在一個教堂，距離她工作的玻璃和大理石外牆的公司總部僅有100碼，他希望獲得許可在教堂庭院裏擦鞋。近20年來，他每天11:30出現，撐起一把綠傘，然後投入工作，爲倫敦金融城午餐休息的員工擦鞋。This work, you might have thought, would be as bad as it gets. Shoe shining is what children in mumbai do when they have lost a father and need to do something to avoid starvation. It is even worse than going up a chimney — that doesn’t require grovelling at the feet of another person.
你可能會認爲，這份工作再糟糕不過了。擦鞋一般是失去父親、需要養家餬口的孟買小孩們所做的工作。它甚至比掃煙囪還要低賤，後者不需要卑躬屈膝地匍匐在別人腳下。But Marc tells another story. When he came to London in the early 1990s he was hoping to work in media. But as the company he interned for paid nothing, he financed that work with shoe shining. After a while he discovered that the media company was phoney; he found greater satisfaction with a can of polish and a brush.
但馬克(Marc)的想法卻恰恰相反。上世紀90年代初，他來到倫敦，希望在媒體工作。但他實習的公司不提供薪資，他依靠擦鞋維持了生計。不久他發現這家媒體公司是個騙子；而他在鞋油和鞋刷中找到了更大的滿足感。As he rubbed and scrubbed at my black ankle boots, I asked precisely what it was about the job he liked so much. “I don’t have to be clever,” he said. “I can be as dumb as I like. I’m not trying to impress anyone.”
當他擦我的黑色及踝靴時，我直接問他爲什麼這麼喜歡這份工作。“我不需要聰明，”他回答，“我可以盡情當個笨人。我不用費力打動別人。”This is an excellent point. I spend half my life trying to impress people — and it’s exhausting. The only thing worse than pretending to be clever yourself is working with people who are pretending even more effectively than you are. Which is what my dinner mate was up against.
這番道理妙極了。我的上半輩子都在努力打動別人，這讓人筋疲力盡。唯一比裝聰明更糟的事情是與那些裝聰明裝得更像的人共事。這就是餐會上那位女士所經歷的。The next good thing about the work, he said, was the satisfaction in the job itself. You take a pair of dull shoes and eight minutes later they are sparkling. I can relate to this too. One of the great things about being a journalist — as opposed to being a banker — is the satisfaction that comes from producing work that is finite and that you can see.
他表示，這份工作的第二個優點在於工作本身所帶來的滿足感。一開始擺在你面前的是一雙黯淡無光的鞋子，8分鐘後，它們就變得光亮如新。我對此深有體會。身爲記者（而非銀行家）的一大優點是創作作品所帶來的滿足感，這種作品是有形、看得見的。Third, and possibly most important of all, is that shoe shining, in marked contrast to banking, gives its customers pleasure. As I walked off with my boots gleaming, I felt better, smarter, more in control. Making someone else feel good is always a reliable source of happiness. That is why hairdressers and beauticians are higher up the list of happy professions than management consultants and corporate lawyers. As a journalist, I try to give readers pleasure too, but I never witness people enjoying my articles. With the shoe shine the pleasure is instant and right under your nose.
第三，或許也是最重要的一點，是擦鞋會給顧客帶來愉悅，這與銀行業形成鮮明對比。當我蹬着光亮如新的靴子離開時，我感覺自己心情更好、形象更光鮮而且更加自如。讓別人感覺良好永遠是快樂的一個可靠來源。正因如此，美髮師和美容師這類職業要比管理諮詢顧問和公司律師更快樂。作爲記者，我也試圖給讀者帶來快樂，但我從未親眼看到讀者開心地讀我的文章。擦鞋所帶來的愉悅是即刻的，而且就在眼前。Fourth, the chat is nice. According to Marc most people in the City are starved of decent conversation, and longing to tell their shoe shine man all sorts of interesting — and sometimes scurrilous — things.
第四，聊天讓人愉快。馬克說，倫敦金融城的多數人都渴望像樣的談話，他們迫不及待地要告訴擦鞋匠各種各樣有趣（有時是齷齪）的事情。Finally, he chooses his own hours. So he shines shoes at lunchtime when trade is brisk, and works as a translator the rest of the time. There is no management, no politics.
最後，他可以自由選擇工作時間。因此他在生意興隆的午餐時分擦鞋，其餘時間則在做翻譯。這裏不存在管理，也沒有政治。There is only one thing that is better about being a banker than shining shoes and that is the money. Marc charges £4.50 for a shine, which means he gets about £30 an hour.
與擦鞋相比，當銀行家唯一的優勢在於收入。馬克每擦一次鞋收費4.50英鎊，這意味着他的時薪是30英鎊左右。He hasn’t made enough money to retire. But that is OK because he doesn’t really want to.
他還沒有賺夠錢退休。但這無所謂，因爲他實際上也不想退休。
