The Great British Bunk Off

学习目标

• 辨认口语、双关与讽刺的落点
• 拆解多层修饰与省略
• 区分工时、产出和生产率
• 概括远程工作的双向影响

AUGUST IN ENGLAND is a strange affair. Offices are half-empty but the cities themselves are not. Parks are strewn with the working-age, lazing in the sun; bars fill from the early afternoon. On a warm Friday, anyone hoping for a dip at Canary Wharf’s new outdoor pool is out of luck. Every session is rammed with working-age adults enjoying Britain’s new Mediterranean climate. The Great British Bunk Off has begun.

英格兰的8月很是奇特。 办公室半空着，城市本身却没有空下来。 公园里到处是处于工作年龄、懒洋洋晒着太阳的人；酒吧从下午早些时候就开始满座。 在一个暖和的星期五，谁想去金丝雀码头新开的室外泳池游一会儿，都只能碰壁。 每个时段都挤满了工作年龄的成年人，享受着英国新近拥有的地中海式气候。 英国全民“摸鱼”季开始了。

Britain does not shut down over summer. There is no equivalent of the grandes vacances in France during the height of summer or Norway’s Fellesferie when the entire country disappears for most of July. The closest Britain comes is “holibobs”—a week or two in Europe or Cornwall. Yet for the rest of August, while their peers in France and Germany are away from their desks, Britain’s holibourgeoisie are stuck in purgatory, neither truly at work nor at rest. All that results is an epidemic of skiving and shirking.

英国并不会在夏季全面停工。 它没有法国盛夏的长假，也没有挪威那种整个国家在7月大部分时间里都不见人影的共同休假期。 英国最接近的做法，是所谓“holibobs”——去欧洲或康沃尔度假一两周。 然而在8月的其余时间，当法国和德国的同业离开办公桌时，英国的“度假小资”却困在炼狱里，既没有真正工作，也没有真正休息。 结果只是一场偷懒和逃避工作的流行病。

It is a British malaise. Britons are inveterate liars when it comes to how much they work. A decade ago statisticians found that a big chunk of Britain’s hourly productivity gap with France was due to Britons vastly overstating how many hours they did. Heat makes them only more deceitful. During summer, about half of British workers confess they clock off early or take extended lunch breaks, according to a survey by Dayforce, an HR-software firm.

这是一种英国式痼疾。 一谈到自己工作了多长时间，英国人便是积习难改的说谎者。 十年前，统计学家发现，英国与法国之间按工时计算的生产率差距，有很大一部分源于英国人把自己的工作时数夸大得太多。 热天气只会让他们更不老实。 人力资源软件公司Dayforce的一项调查显示，夏季约有一半英国劳动者承认，自己会提早下班或延长午休。

And who can blame them? Productive work becomes close to impossible in summer. Co-ordination falls apart. Any request is met with a flurry of out-of-office emails. Some professions such as MPs and judges are Augustocrats able to take the whole month off. Schools shut so teachers can enjoy six weeks off. This has a knock-on impact. Four in ten working parents combine working from home with child care, according to the Trades Union Congress, a federation of unions. Arriving emails compete for attention with screaming six-year-olds. The result? More bunking off.

可谁又能责怪他们呢？ 夏天要高效工作，几乎成了不可能的事。 协调散了架。 任何请求迎来的都是一连串外出自动回复邮件。 有些职业，比如议员和法官，是能把整个8月都休掉的“八月贵族”。 学校关门，让教师可以享受六周假期。 这带来了连锁影响。 英国工会组织全国职工总会称，十名有工作的家长中，四人把居家办公与照顾孩子结合在一起。 不断到来的邮件与尖叫着的六岁孩子争夺注意力。 结果呢？ 更多的开小差。

Partly it is culture struggling to keep up with the climate. Mild temperatures have long meant that Britons soldier on through the summer, while continental Europe hits the beach. Climate-change deniers are rare but summer deniers are common. Some still do not accept that Britain is a hot country, for a few months at least. And heat makes people listless: each degree above 20°C knocks about 2% off productivity. Almost all the European countries Britain compares itself with are more productive. If searching for a solution, start with Britain’s summer.

部分原因，是文化习惯难以跟上气候变化。 温和的气温长期以来意味着：当欧洲大陆奔向海滩时，英国人仍在整个夏季坚持工作。 否认气候变化的人并不常见，否认夏天的人却很普遍。 有些人仍不肯承认，英国也是个炎热的国家，至少一年有几个月如此。 而热天气会使人无精打采：气温超过20℃后，每升高1℃，生产率就会下降约2%。 英国拿来与自己比较的欧洲国家，几乎个个生产率都更高。 若要寻找解决办法，就从英国的夏天入手吧。

It was not always this way. Britons once enjoyed a rigid separation between work and rest. During “wakes weeks” in the 19th and early 20th centuries, mills would fall silent for a break in summer and the inhabitants of Rochdale and Bury would descend en masse to Blackpool, a seaside resort in England’s chilly north-west.

情况并非一直如此。 英国人曾经享有工作与休息之间严格的界线。 在19世纪和20世纪早期的“工厂休假周”，工厂会在夏季停机休息，罗奇代尔与伯里的居民则会成群涌向黑潭——英格兰凉飕飕的西北部一处海滨度假地。

Today the lines are blurred. In Greater Manchester, mills that once contained looms are now filled with digital admen firing off emails that could be sent from anywhere. And so people do. Britons work from home for about 1.8 days per week, which is far more than in most European countries. In France the average is half that, according to one paper. Turning two days a week into four or five during August is easy. Maintaining motivation in a sweltering attic office while messages pile up is hard.

如今，界线模糊了。 在大曼彻斯特，曾经摆满织机的厂房，如今坐着不断发送邮件的数字广告从业者；这些邮件无论身在何处都能发出。 于是人们也确实到处发邮件。 英国人每周居家办公约1.8天，比多数欧洲国家多得多。 一篇研究论文称，法国的平均数是这个数字的一半。 在8月，把每周两天改成四五天很容易。 可在闷热的阁楼办公室里，看着消息越积越多，还要保持干劲，就难了。

In another sense it is a return. Before the Industrial Revolution, working patterns were ragged, argued the historian E.P. Thompson. One poet summed up the working week in 1639: “You know that Munday is Sundayes brother/Tuesday is such another/Wednesday you must go to Church and pray/Thursday is half-holiday/On Friday it is too late to begin to spin/The Saturday is half-holiday agen.” Strip out the trips to church and a 17th-century satire is a fair summary of August working in 2026.

从另一个意义上说，这是一种回归。 历史学家E. P. 汤普森认为，工业革命之前，人们的工作节奏并不规整。 一位诗人在1639年这样概括一周的工作：“你知道星期一是星期日的兄弟／星期二也是一路货色／星期三你得去教堂祈祷／星期四是半天假／星期五再开纺就太迟／星期六又放半天假。” 去掉上教堂那些安排，一首17世纪的讽刺诗，就能相当贴切地概括2026年8月的工作状态。

Employers can fight back. Technology that liberates workers from their commutes on Fridays can capture their holiday in August, points out Nick Bloom, an economist from Stanford. And so the front line of the fight between labour and capital is now the sun lounger rather than a factory floor. A leisurely backstroke at 3pm in Canary Wharf on a hot August weekday becomes a wet wildcat strike; a manager emailing an underling they know is on the beach is the equivalent of a Victorian mill owner fiddling the clocks to shorten a break.

雇主可以反击。 斯坦福大学经济学家尼克·布卢姆指出，让劳动者星期五免去通勤的技术，也能在8月把他们的假期夺走。 于是，劳资斗争的前线如今成了日光躺椅，而不是工厂车间。 炎热的8月工作日，下午3点在金丝雀码头悠闲地仰泳，就成了一场湿淋淋的自发罢工；而经理给明知正在海滩上的下属发邮件，就相当于维多利亚时代的工厂老板拨弄时钟，缩短工人的休息。

Who can bring peace to this struggle? Politicians show little interest. They once promised leisure: in 2017 Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party proposed four new bank holidays. Interest rates were zero and money was free, so why shouldn’t time be? Now no major party bothers. Labour’s sweeping Employment Rights Act had little to say on holidays; the government chickened out of a “right to switch off”, which would have made it harder for companies to contact staff out of hours.

谁能给这场争斗带来和平？ 政客们兴趣寥寥。 他们曾承诺更多闲暇：2017年，杰里米·科尔宾领导的工党提议增加四个公共假日。 当时利率为零，钱都免费了，时间又为何不能免费呢？ 如今，没有哪个大党还为此费心。 工党那部范围广泛的《就业权利法》对假期着墨不多；政府还临阵退缩，放弃了“离线权”，而这一权利原本会让企业更难在工作时间之外联系员工。

The Great British Bunk Off could be a solution rather than a scandal. Skiving is perhaps a necessary pressure valve for the labour market, allowing it to clear. If workers actually worked the hours, would companies be happy to offer a pay rise (plus a little extra for child care)? The Great British Bunk Off becomes a Soviet compromise: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”

英国全民“摸鱼”季，可能是一种解决办法，而不是什么丑闻。 偷懒或许是劳动力市场必要的泄压阀，使市场得以出清。 假如劳动者真的把那些工时全都做满，企业会乐意涨工资，再额外给一点育儿补贴吗？ 英国全民“摸鱼”季，就变成了苏联式的妥协：“我们假装工作，他们假装付薪。”

Joining the rest of Europe and embracing an actual shutdown would be a gamble, a bet that Parkinson’s law—the idea that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”—is a fundamental rule of economics, rather than a joke. Telling people to knuckle down is no more appealing. One cabinet minister suggests that if Britain wants to survive, it should consider a six-day week, rather than a four-day one. It would be a brave politician to pitch it. And so the Great British Bunk Off will remain a summer fixture, best observed from a berth at the lido or horizontally in a park. Good luck finding a spot.

加入欧洲其他地区、真正全面停工休假，将是一场冒险：赌帕金森定律——“工作会膨胀，填满完成它所能使用的时间”这一说法——是一条基本经济规律，而不只是个笑话。 叫人们埋头苦干，也同样不讨喜。 一位内阁大臣建议，英国如果想生存下去，就该考虑每周工作六天，而不是四天。 敢推销这个主张的政客，可真算得上勇敢。 所以，英国全民“摸鱼”季仍将是每年夏天的固定节目，最佳观察位置是在露天泳池占一个位子，或平躺在公园里。 祝你能找得到地方。

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