当邮差比当高管更快乐？
我有个朋友最近做了邮差。我上一次见到这个人时，他还是一家有机冷冻快餐食品销售公司的市场营销主管。但此后，这家公司就被出售给了一家跨国企业。在为新东家做了一段时间的顾问后，他还是被免了职。
One of my friend became a postman recently. The last time I'd seen this man he was the marketing director of a business that sold organic TV dinners. But since then his company had been sold to a multinational and, after a brief spell as a consultant to the new buyer, he had been eased out altogether.
有一阵子他一直想找类似的工作，但他发现，在经济衰退期间，没人想给一位56岁的失业者发放6位数年薪，做市场营销。考虑再三，他决定尝试去做一份自孩童时代起就曾梦想着的工作。他骄傲地看着我说：“我是个邮差。”
For a while he had looked for similar work but discovered that in a recession no one wants to pay an unemployed 56-year-old a six-figure salary to work in marketing. So he thought again and decided to try his hand at the job that he had wanted to do ever since he was a boy. He looked at me triumphantly. “I'm a postman,” he said.
“我的天啊，”我说。“感觉如何？”他表示，这是他有生以来最棒的一份工作。
“Blimey,” I said. “What's it like?” He said it was quite the best job he'd ever had.
我这位熟人证实，他的同事们既不太好，也不太差。没有什么暖人心房的同志情谊；相反，他们还对他怀有一丝敌意，因为他是兼职，而他们憎恨兼职工作者。每天早晨7点半，他才悠闲自得地开始投递信件，而这些信是那些全职工人们花了2个小时分拣出来的。
My acquaintance confirmed that his fellow postmen were neither terribly nice nor terribly nasty. There was no heart-warming camaraderie; instead there was a mild hostility caused by the fact that he works part time and they resent part timers. He pitches up at a relatively leisurely 7.30am to deliver the letters that full timers have already been sorting for two hours.
总之，士气相当低落。邮政行业每年在以10%左右的速度萎缩。如今，邮差被迫加快步伐，递送量大得能累断腰的垃圾邮件。
Morale, in any case, was quite low. The business is contracting at about 10 per cent a year. And postmen are now being forced to walk faster and deliver back-breaking quantities of junk mail.
那么他为何还这么快乐呢？我对此很好奇。几乎不可能是因为钱——这份工作周薪为235英镑（合381美元），是他过去收入的十分之一。但他表示，即便如此，他也不介意。孩子们都已离开家，自己也从上一份工作中积攒了一些积蓄。他认为这份薪水很公平，他还告诉我，前一周他赚了一些加班费，他感到自己变得富有了，因为他能另外叫一份外卖比萨饼了。
So why was he so happy? I wondered. It could hardly be the money – his gross pay of £235 ($381, €274) a week is a 10th of what he used to make. But even that, he said, didn't bother him. His kids had left home and he had some savings from his old job. He thought it a fair rate for the job and told me that the previous week he had made some overtime and felt rich because he could buy a takeaway pizza out of the extra.
他解释说，这份工作真正吸引自己的是它有益健康。相对于坐上4个小时，走4个小时是更让人从心底感到愉悦的打发时间的方式。或许的确如此；但对我来说，拖着个邮包在阴暗的政府福利房的楼梯上爬上爬下，似乎也不像是快乐的秘诀。
He explained that what he really liked about the job was that it was healthy. Four hours spent walking was an inherently happier way of spending one's time than four hours sitting on one's bottom. Maybe; yet to me lugging a bag up and down the stairs of dismal council flats still didn't seem like a recipe for happiness.
他说他还喜欢和人打交道——送信时，你会对人们有深入了解。但这个解释同样不令人信服。对于一名现代邮差来说，除了说句“早上好”，接着快速转向下一家，他也没时间再做更多别的什么事儿了。
He said he also liked the contact with the people – when you deliver people's mail you get to know a good deal about them. But this wasn't a proper answer either. There is no time for a modern postman to do much more than say “morning!” and pass on swiftly.
