If you have ever gone through a toll booth(收费所), you know that your relationship to the person in
the booth is not the most intimate you'll ever have. It is one of life's
frequent affairs: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive
off.
Late one
morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward a booth. I
heard loud music. It sounded like a party. I looked around. No other cars with
their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the
man was dancing.
"What
are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm
having a party," he said.
"What
about the rest of the people?" I looked at the other toll booths.
He said,
"What do those look like to you?" He pointed down the row of toll
booths.
"They
look like……toll booths. What do they look like to you?"
He said,
"Vertical coffins. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they
die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge
and go home. For eight hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through
the motions."
I was
amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology about his job. Sixteen
people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation,
figures out a way to live. I could not help asking the next question: "Why
is it different for you? You're having a good time."
He looked at me. "I knew you were going to ask
that. I don't understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a
corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco,
and the Berkeley hills. Half the Western world vacations here……and I just
stroll in every day and practice dancing."
1.According to the first paragraph, in most cases, how
do you describe the relationship between drivers and toll booth?
A.most intimate B.very tense C.pretty
ordinary D.extremely
hostile
2.Why did the author go to San Francisco?
A. To attend a party
B. B. To have a meal
C. To dance with the worker in the toll booth
D. To hand in the repair fee of his car
3.The underlined name “Lazarus” mentioned in the
eighth paragraph probably refers to a person___________.
A. who was very active in his life
B. B. who was dead and revived from death
C. who was going to San Francisco
D. who liked dancing at work
4.According to the passage, which of the following
statements is true?
A.The author
passed by the toll booth every day.
B.The worker
enjoyed his work very much.
C.Only western
people like to spend their holidays in the Berkeley hills.
D.The dancing
worker was getting badly along with his colleagues.
5.After hearing what the worker said, the author would
probably_________.
A.go to the
worker’s senior to complain about his bad attitude
towards job.
B.go climbing
the Golden Gate and the Berkeley hills to have a vacation.
C.learn to take
a positive attitude to job and appreciate valuable things in life.
D.go back home
instead of wasting time traveling to San Francisco.