This charmless message prompted an angry underling to set up a fake Twitter account in Soden's name with tweets that say “I love my life” and “Analyst slacking again. Headed to mosque to get him back to work. Traffic sucks.”这条生硬的消息刺激一名愤怒的下属以佐登的名义创建了一个冒名Twitter账户,并发信息称“我热爱我的生活”,“分析师又开始吊儿郎当了。我到清真寺把他抓回来上班。交通糟透了。”

Satire as a means of revenge is one of the deadliest there is – and long pre-dates the internet. In 1992, I was involved in the toppling of an overbearing boss and, even though my role was accidental, I've been dining out on it ever since. I had gone to interview Bob Horton, the then head of BP, who solemnly told me how important he was – how busy and how powerful. My article (which repeated what he had said but was otherwise quite bland) was seized on by an in-house satirist who wrote a spoof suggesting that Horton was friendly with Pol Pot and his office furniture was modelled on Napoleon's throne. This was widely circulated and much giggled over and, within a few weeks, Horton was ousted in a boardroom coup.
讽刺作为一种报复手段,是最致命的武器之一,且早在互联网出现之前很久就已存在。1992年,我曾参与把一位傲慢的老板掀下台来。尽管我的卷入是个意外,但自此以后,我一直靠着这项成就而被人请吃饭。当时,我去采访时任英国石油(BP)首席执行官的鲍勃•霍顿(Bob Horton),他很严肃地告诉我他是如何重要——多么忙碌,多么有影响力。一名内部讽刺作家引用了我的文章(文章中重复了霍顿的话,但在其它方面则相当平淡无奇),写了一篇幽默的讽刺文章,暗指霍顿对红色高棉的波尔布特(Pol Pot)很友好,而他办公室的家具则是模仿拿破仑的宝座。本文广为流传,令人忍俊不禁,而不出几个星期,霍顿就在一场董事会变动中被逐下了台。

Thanks to the internet, one no longer needs the satirical element to do the damage. The victim's own words can be more than enough – as Gordon Brown's adviser, Damian McBride, found last week when his low down e-mail attempting to smear opposition leaders was leaked to a political website. Not only his party but the whole country then turned on him.
多亏了互联网,人们不再需要讽刺元素来破坏。受害者自己的言语就足够了——就像戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)的顾问达米安•麦克布赖德(Damian McBride)上周发现,一封他企图诽谤反对党领袖的内部电子邮件,被泄露给一家政治网站。于是,不仅是他所在的党,而是整个国家都开始向他开火。

There is nothing more enjoyable than seeing bosses fall not on their own swords but on their own words. David Greer, a Shell executive, gave a lot of pleasure to a lot of people with his leaked e-mail that ordered his underlings to “lead me, follow me or get out of my way”. Just as the angry mob used to relish throwing squashed vegetables at people in the stocks, the angry workers read leaked e-mails such as this and enjoy chucking their own furious comments into cyberspace.
再没有什么比看着老板们倒在他们自己的言辞下,而非剑下更令人感到愉快的了。壳牌(Shell)高管戴维•格里尔(David Greer)泄露的电子邮件为许多人带来了快乐,在邮件中,他命令其下属“要么领导我、要么跟随我、要么滚开”。就像愤怒的暴民喜欢向带着枷锁的犯人扔烂蔬菜一样,愤怒的员工阅读这些泄露的电子邮件,将自己愤怒的评论掷入网络空间,并对此很享受。

Most bosses are too sensible to send intemperate e-mails that would get them into trouble of this sort and most workers are too sensible for bricks or keys, meaning that other ways need to be found to vent anger. The internet is full of advice here.
大多数老板都非常理智,不会发送会令自己陷入此类麻烦的电子邮件,而大多数员工也很理智,不会诉诸于砖头和钥匙,这意味着,人们必须寻找其它途径来发泄。互联网上有的是建议。

My favourite suggestion is to raise the desk of the boss just a tiny bit every day and lower his chair – to give him the feeling that he is shrinking. Another tip is to insert an embarrassing picture into the middle of his PowerPoint slides on the Korean economy. A third is to unplug the keyboard from the back of the computer, so that he will have to summon the help desk and then look a fool when they plug it back in for him. These suggestions strike me as the equivalent of putting a sticker on the teacher's back saying Kick Me. I thought such things were hilarious when I was 13 but, sadly, I'm not sure if I have the heart for them now.
我特别喜欢的一条建议是,每天把老板的桌子抬高一点点,同时把椅子调低一点点——让他感觉自己在不断萎缩。另一个建议是,在他关于韩国经济的幻灯片中,插入一张令人尴尬的图片。第三招是将键盘插头从电脑后面拔掉,那么他将不得不召唤服务台,当他们把插头插回去时,让他看上去像个白痴。这些建议给我的感觉,就像在老师背后贴一张粘纸,写着“踢我吧”。我在13岁时认为这些做法非常有趣,但很遗憾,我不确定现在自己是否还忍心这样做。

There is another way of extracting revenge that is safer and more honourable but it takes longer. And that is to do nothing at all.
还有另一种更安全、更高尚、但耗时更久的报复办法。那就是什么也不做。

Almost everyone gets their comeuppance in the end. Every bad boss – and even quite a few good ones – will trip up of their own accord if one just waits long enough.
几乎每个人最终都会得到应有的报应。如果人们等待的时间足够长,每一位坏老板——甚至许多好老板——都将自己露出破绽。

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