每天一篇经济学人 | Small moments of great ten...
How to navigate workplace awkwardness
如何应对职场尴尬
The meeting has been going on for almost an hour already, but the end is now in sight. The vast majority of attendees have already got the cursor lined up over the “leave” button; freedom, or at least a five-minute break, is a click away. And then whoever is chairing asks a simple but terrible question: “Does anyone have anything they want to add?”
会议已经开了将近一个小时了，终于要结束了。绝大多数与会者已经将光标对准了“离开会以”按钮；点击鼠标即可获得自由，或者至少5分钟的休息时间。然后主持会议的人会问一个简单却可怕的问题:“有人有什么想补充的吗?”
Cue almost unendurable suspense. If the chairman’s voice is the next you hear, it’s all over bar the ritual waving at the camera. But if any of your other treasured colleagues speak up, your plan for a nice cup of tea is destroyed. The silence stretches for a period of seconds. Almost safe. “There is just one thing,” says Lauren from procurement, oblivious to the tiny dreams she has dashed and the fleeting hatred she has aroused.
【1】fleeting 短暂的；转瞬即逝的
这暗示了几乎难以忍受的焦虑。如果你接下来听到的是董事长的声音，那么除了向镜头挥手再见的仪式之外，一切都结束了。但是如果你的其他“珍爱的”同事大胆发言，你的一杯好茶的计划就泡汤了。沉默持续了几秒钟。几乎是安全的。“只有一件事，”采购部的劳伦说，她完全没有意识到自己已经破碎的那些微小梦想，以及她引发的那些短暂的仇恨。
For most people, the workplace is not a stage for high drama. Careers are punctuated by only a few defining moments, from the interview for the top job to the m&a deal that upends an industry. Although some companies and departments are marked by bullying and burnout, more fortunate employees experience suspense through a series of micro-dramas. Some small moments of great tension happen often enough that they are almost tropes.
【1】punctuate 不时打断；不时中断
对大多数人来说，工作场所并不是充满戏剧性的舞台。职业生涯中只有几个决定性的时刻，从最高职位的面试到颠覆一个行业的并购交易。虽然一些公司和部门以欺凌和倦怠为标志，但更幸运的员工通过一系列“微型戏剧”感受到焦虑。一些极度紧张的小时刻经常发生，以至于它们几乎成了比喻。
The pandemic has created many of these moments. A big Zoom call is under way, with lots of people on the line. Everyone is muted, save the speaker and one unfortunate soul, who has managed to unmute themselves. A lot of rustling can be heard. A family conversation is going on, a small slice of domestic life being broadcast inadvertently into the workplace. It’s almost too much bear. What if they have a blazing row? What if someone says out loud what everyone is thinking about the speaker? The horror of mild public embarrassment looms, and it is stomach-churning. “Jesus, this is unbearable,” you say to yourself, and realise you are also unmuted.
【1】inadvertently 不经意地
大流行创造了许多这样的时刻。一个大型的Zoom电话正在进行中，有很多人在线上。每个人都处于静音状态，除了演讲者和一个不幸的灵魂，他们设法解除静音状态。（你）可以听到很多沙沙声。一场家庭对话正在进行，家庭生活的一小部分在不经意间被传播到了工作场所。要承受的太多了。如果他们大吵一架怎么办？如果有人大声说出每个人对演讲者的看法怎么办？轻微的公众尴尬的恐怖隐约出现，令人反胃。“天哪，这太难以忍受了，”你对自己说，然后意识到自己没静音。
Email can also evoke emotion. There is panic, after you send a message to the wrong person and frantically scramble to hit “undo” or “delete”. There is dread, when an email arrives from the person who is reliably wrong about everything and you know that opening it will mean conflict and wasted time. And there is mortification on behalf of other people, when an all-staff missive from the chief executive goes out about a new initiative and someone hits “reply all” on their message oleaginously congratulating the boss on their utter brilliance.
【1】mortification 窘迫；羞愧
电子邮件同样能唤起这样的情绪。当你把信息发给了错误的人，并疯狂地乱按“撤销”或“删除”键时，你会感到恐慌。当一封电子邮件从一个完全误解所有事情的人而来，你知道打开它将意味着冲突和浪费时间时，你会感到恐惧。当首席执行官向全体员工发送一封有关一项新举措的信函时，有人点击了邮件上的“回复全部”，并“油嘴滑舌”地祝贺老板的卓越才华，其他人也会感到羞愧。
Presenting is a low-stakes, high-tension act. “I’m going to share my screen,” you say, and press the button that promises just that. The presenting icon circles and circles, and you wonder if it will ever stop. Then you pick the wrong tab to share and everyone can see your calendar, including the entries marked “Job interview”. Then you share your whole screen and suddenly infinite, ever-smaller versions of yourself appear. It is a similar story in the real world. The clicker doesn’t work, so you hopefully press it a few times and the deck suddenly jumps forward to the slide that gives away your unexpected strategy recommendation.
演讲是一种低风险、高压力的行为。“我要共享我的屏幕，”你说，然后按下共享的按钮。呈现在眼前的图标一圈又一圈，你想知道它是否会停止。然后你选择了一个错误的标签来分享，每个人都可以看到你的日历，其中包括标有“工作面试”的条目。然后你分享你的整个屏幕，突然间无限缩小的你出现了。在现实世界中也是类似的情况。点击器不起作用了，所以你希望多按几次，然后就会突然跳到幻灯片页面上，从而透露你那意想不到的策略建议。
The offline world offers other moments of diminutive drama. Entering and exiting meetings while they are still going on is stressless in a virtual environment; in the real world, you have to negotiate your way past colleagues and whisper apologies.
在线下世界中，还有其他的小戏剧时刻。在虚拟环境中，在会议还在进行的时候进出会议是没有压力的；在现实世界中，你必须与“挡道”的同事协商并低声道歉。
The working lunch is not a problem online: camera off, microphone off, nosh away. In person you must choose items that can be eaten quickly, efficiently and silently. Eating crisps during an in-person presentation sounds like setting off a firework display in a monastery. Taking a bite of some sandwiches risks a carnivorous version of the magician’s handkerchief trick, as you find yourself slowly pulling an entire side of beef into your mouth in one go.
在线上，工作午餐不是问题：关掉摄像头、麦克风、吃东西。你必须亲自选择能够快速、高效、安静地吃下去的食物。在现场演示时吃薯片听起来就像在寺庙里放烟花。咬一口三明治，你会发现自己一下子就把一整面牛肉塞进嘴里，就像魔术师用手帕表演的食肉性魔术一样。
If you do not recognise any of these miniature dramas, one possible explanation is that you are already the boss: life is generally a lot less tense if you have ludicrous amounts of self-belief and get to set the rules. But for many employees, as well as almost everyone in Britain, this is what suspense looks like, not remotely dangerous but teeming with the possibility of awkwardness.
如果你没有意识到这些微型“戏剧”，一种可能的解释是，你已经是老板了:如果你有难以置信的自信，并且能够制定规则，生活通常会轻松得多。但对于许多员工，以及几乎所有英国人来说，这就是“焦虑”的样子，一点也不危险，但却充满了尴尬的可能性。
If you and someone else have started making a point at the same time, do you keep going and hope that he gives way? What conversation can you start and finish in the time it takes for the lift to go five floors? And so on. The workplace can be a place of planet-changing ideas and epic rivalries. Day by day, it is a theatre of mild agitation.
如果你和别人同时开始提出一个观点，你会继续下去，然后希望他让步吗？什么对话能在电梯走到五层的时间内开始并结束？诸如此类。工作场所可能是一个充满改变地球的想法和史诗般的竞争的地方。日复一日，这是一个充满轻微“焦虑”的剧院。
