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Is shirking just a smarter way of working?

假裝是聰明的工作方式?

“Fudgelling”, I learned the other day, is an 18th-century word meaning “pretending to work whenyou’re not really working”, which goes to show it’s anage-old phenomenon. (There’s also the Italianphrase giacca civetta, or “owl jacket”, a moderncoinage to describe the jacket slung over a deskchair, late at night, while its owner is enjoying ladolce vita.)

前幾天我了解到“Fudgelling”是一個18世紀的單詞，它的意思是“假裝工作”，這說明這是一個自古便有的現象。(還有意大利短語giacca civetta或者是“貓頭鷹夾克”，這是一個現代的詞匯，用來描述夾克掛在書桌的椅子上，實指深夜時夾克的主人過著馬切羅式的逃避生活)

Today, with work demanding more of us than ever, it’s no surprise to witness the rise ofextreme fudgelling. In a recent study, the academic Erin Reid spent time at an unnamed USmanagement consultancy that exp plans to stay late, etc. She discovered that 31% of men and11% of women found ways tects total devotion from employees: responding to emails atmidnight, cancelling birthday plans to stay late,etc.She discovered that 31% of men and 11%percent of women found ways to “pass” as workaholics: they vanished from work without tellinganyone, or made covert deals with colleagues so they could spend time with their families.

今天,隨著工作的要求越來越多,人們不難看到極端fudgelling的興起。在最近的一項研究中,美國學術艾琳·里德在一個不知名的管理咨詢公司做實驗計劃待到很晚。她發現31%的男性和11%的女性找到誰是全情投入工作的員工的方法:午夜回復郵件,熬夜取消生日聚會等。她發現31%的男性和11%的女性找到了作為工作狂的“通行證”:他們沒有通知任何人便從工作中消失,或者為了能夠花時間與他們的家人(在一起),而與同事秘密做交易。

And here’s the thing: it worked. People who made formal arrangements to reduce theirworkloads - more often women - got penalised for not pulling their weight. Yet the fakeworkaholics, predominantly men, were seen as no less devoted to their jobs than the realones, and were rewarded accordingly. This says something depressing about sexism, but it alsoshows that what was being rewarded wasn’t relentless work, but the appearance ofrelentless work.And here’s the thing: it worked.

現在的情況是:它確實有效。通常情況下，女性通過做出正式工作安排減輕壓力，卻因為不盡責而受到懲罰。因此然而,假的工作狂,主要是指男人,他們并沒有和真正的工作狂一樣盡心付出，卻也得到相應的獎勵。這里便提出了性別歧視這樣令人沮喪的問題，同時表明，獲得獎勵并不是因為刻薄無情的努力工作，而是努力工作的表象：這種方式確實有效。

What we are dealing with here is “signalling”- in this case, how we communicate the messagethat work’s getting done, which doesn’t always mean work’s really getting done.

我們在這里討論的是“信號”，是指在這種情況下，我們如何傳達正在工作這種信息，而這并不總是意味著真正在工作。