Unit 1 BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY课文翻译大学英语四

Unit 1 BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY

John G. Hubbell

Two college-age boys, unaware that making money usually involves hard work, are tempted by an advertisement that promises them an easy way to earn a lot of money. The boys soon learn that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.

\way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all the time.\magazines in a plastic bag someone bad hung on our doorknob. A message printed on the bag offered leisurely, lucrative work (\bags.

\ \

\，\no longer embarrasses you.\

The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing. Pleased, I left town on a business trip. By midnight I was comfortably settled in a hotel room far from home. The phone rang. It was my wife. She wanted to know how my day had gone. \

\pulled up out front.\ \

\The second brought four thousand Sears, Roebucks. I don't know what this one has, but I'm sure it will be four thousand of something. Since you are responsible, I thought you might like to know what's happening.

What I was being blamed for, it turned out, was a newspaper strike which made it necessary to hand-deliver the advertising inserts that normally are included with the Sunday paper. The company had promised our boys $600 for delivering these inserts to 4,000 houses by Sunday morning.

\

\ \\big guys are carrying armloads of paper up the walk. What do we do about all this?\

\tell the boys to get busy,\I instructed. \college men. They'll do what they have to do.\

At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent message to telephone my wife. Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering. There had been several more truckloads of ad inserts. \for department stores, dime stores, drugstores, grocery stores, auto stores and so on. Some are whole magazine sections. We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pages of advertising here! They are crammed wall-to-wall all through the house in stacks taller than your oldest son. There's only enough room for people to walk in, take one each of the eleven inserts, roll them together, slip a rubber band around them and slide them into a plastic bag. We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant in America!\as if working its way out of the range of the human ear. \this must be delivered by seven o'clock Sunday morning.\

\talk to you later. Got a lunch date.

When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.

\you have a nice lunch?\she asked sweetly. I had had a marvelous steak, but knew better by now than to say so.

\

\of neighborhood children to help for five dollars each. Assembly lines have been set up. In the language of diplomacy, there is 'movement.'\ \

\it's not,\she corrected. \very discouraging. They're been as it for hours. Plastic bags have been filled and piled to the ceiling, but all this hasn't made a dent, not a dent, in the situation! It's almost as if the inserts keep reproducing themselves!\

\the best out of employees by threatening them with bodily harm.

Obtaining an audience with son NO. 1, I snarled, \kids again! Idiot! You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the most bags.

\

\time. If they don't, you two will have to remove all that paper by yourselves. And there will be no eating or sleeping until it is removed.\

There was a short, thoughtful silence. Then he said, \you have just worked a profound change in my personality.\ \ \

By the following evening, there was much for my wife to report. The bonus program had worked until someone demanded to see the color of cash. Then some activist on the work force claimed that the workers had no business settling for $5 and a few competitive bonuses while the bossed collected hundreds of dollars each. The organizer had declared that all the workers were entitled to $5 per hour! They would not work another minute until the bosses agreed.

The strike lasted less than two hours. In mediation, the parties agreed on $2 per hour. Gradually, the huge stacks began to shrink.

As it turned out, the job was completed three hours before Sunday's 7 a.m. deadline. By the time I arrived home, the boys had already settled their accounts: $150 in labor costs, $40 for gasoline, and a like amount

for gifts—boxes of candy for saintly neighbors who had volunteered station wagons and help in delivery and dozen roses for their mother. This left them with $185 each — about two-thirds the minimum wage for the 91 hours they worked. Still, it was \as one of them put it, to enable them to \

All went well for some weeks. Then one Saturday morning my attention was drawn to the odd goings-on of our two youngest sons. They kept carrying carton after carton from various corners of the house out the front door to curbside. I assumed their mother had enlisted them to remove junk for a trash pickup. Then I overheard them discussing finances.

\ \

Investigation revealed that they were offering \ \ \ \

\as well make a little money from them. We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for……\

一个大学男孩，不清楚赚钱需要付出艰苦的劳动，被一份许诺轻松赚大钱的广告吸引了。男孩们很快就明白，如果事情看起来好得不像真的，那多半确实不是真的。

轻轻松松赚大钱

“你们该看看这个，”我向我们的两个读大学的儿子建议道。“你们若想避免因为老是向人讨钱而有失尊严的话，这兴许是一种办法。”我将挂在我们门把手上的、装在一个塑料袋里的几本杂志拿给他们。塑料袋上印着一条信息说，需要招聘人投递这样的袋子，这活儿既轻松又赚钱。（“轻轻松松赚大钱!”）

“我不在乎失不失尊严，”大儿子回答说。 “我可以忍受，”他的弟弟附和道。 < …… 此处隐藏：5765字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……