狄更斯辦公桌的故事 Dickens and the latest chapter in the story of desks
Earlier this year the desk on which Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations went up for sale. It was a clumpy Victorian piece of furniture, made of dark mahogany with heavy drawers on either side in a style so unfashionable that similar ones are to be had on Ebay for about 500.
今年早些時候，查爾斯狄更斯(Charles Dickens)寫《遠大前程》(Great Expectations)時所用的桌子要出售了。那是一件笨重的維多利亞時期傢俱，用暗色桃花心木製成，兩邊都有沉重的抽屜，這種風格實在太過時了，類似的款式在Ebay上只要大概500英鎊就可以買到。
Yet such is the relationship between a person and his workstation that this particular desk — along with the chair on which the author placed his famous behind — is now on display at his former house in Doughty Street, thanks to a charitable grant of more than 780,000.
然而，一個人和他的工作臺的關係就是如此緊密，得益於一筆超過78萬英鎊的慈善捐款，這張桌子——和作者著名的臀部曾經坐過的那把椅子一起——現在都在倫敦道蒂街(Doughty Street)的狄更斯故居里展出。
Desks tell us a good deal about the person who sits at them — as well as about the time at which the sitting was done. What Dickens’ desk says is that writing is a serious but solitary business — and that the man who wrote here was important and prosperous.
桌子能夠極大地揭示坐在桌旁的人是一個什麼樣的人、以及這個人坐在桌旁時處於一個什麼樣的時代。狄更斯的桌子透露出，寫作是件嚴肅但孤獨的事情，曾經在這張桌子上寫作的那個人是個事業成功的重要人物。
My desk is made of beige melamine with grey metal legs and designed to slot together with similar ones. It is not a thing of beauty; its only design quirk is a scooped out arc in the middle at the front, as if to accommodate a beer belly.
我的桌子是米色的三聚氰胺板製成的，灰色金屬桌腿，其設計目的是爲了和相似的桌子拼在一起。它並不美；唯一有設計感的地方是在桌子前部中間呈弧形凹進去，就像是爲了讓有啤酒肚的人坐着舒適。
This desk says I work in a democratic, faceless age, preoccupied by the ideas of teamwork and practicality. The scoop tells you not about the girth of workers, but that we care about ergonomics. The chair that goes with it is so comfortable that its occupant can sit there for 12 hours at a stretch without discomfort.
這張桌子透露出，我生活在一個民主、缺乏個性的時代，這個時代的主導思想是團隊合作和實用主義。那個凹陷的設計透露出的不是員工的身材，而是我們對人體工程學的關注。這張桌子配備的椅子如此舒適，在上面連續坐上12個小時也不會難受。
On my desk, alongside a computer, various old sandwich wrappers, some management books, old newspapers and magazines, a grubby sLing, a bike helmet and a clutter of pens and papers are lying around. In the drawers, along with Biros and tights, is a BlackBerry box dating from a decade ago. The clues are not hard to decipher: I cycle, Ihurt my arm recently, I do not take proper lunch breaks and my job involves scanning publications for ideas.
在我的桌子上，除了一臺電腦，還散落着各種各樣用過的三明治包裝紙，一些管理學書籍，舊報紙和雜誌，一條髒兮兮的手臂懸帶，一個自行車頭盔，還有一堆筆和紙。抽屜裏，除了一些圓珠筆和絲襪，還有一個有10多年曆史的黑莓(BlackBerry)手機盒子。這些線索不難解讀：我騎自行車，我最近弄傷過胳膊，我沒有用午休時間正經吃午餐，以及我的工作涉及通過閱讀來獲取靈感。
It also tells you that I have been sitting in this very place for a long time.
這張辦公桌還透露出，我已經在這個位置坐了很長一段時間了。
In this, I am becoming increasingly unusual. More and more, the typical office desk has nothing on it, as the amount of time any given worker sits in a particular spot is one day. When hot desking was introduced some 15 years ago, no one thought it would ever catch on.
就這一點而言，我正日益變成少數派。一張辦公桌上空無一物將日益成爲常態，因爲任何一個員工坐在特定的某張桌子旁的時間也就是一天。大約15年前非固定辦公桌（Hot-desking，又稱辦公桌輪用制）出現在辦公室的時候，沒人認爲這種做法會流行起來。
Now they do it in Whitehall, where earlier this year there was a minor scandal over workers queuing for desks. The civil service has a rule that there should be seven desks for every 10 workers — you do not need to be a mathematical genius to see the charm of this potential cost saving of 30 per cent. They do it at the BBC, where the desk shortage has been famously satirised in the comic television drama W1A. Even the governor of the Bank of England does it. When he took over the BoE, Mark Carney was so determined to be modern he took his laptop and went to squat at the desks of different departments (though he kept his own desk in his private office to fall back on).
現在，白廳(Whitehall)就採取這種做法，今年早些時候還鬧出一樁小小的醜聞——在那裏上班的人得排隊使用辦公桌。公務員系統有規定，要求每10人應配有7張桌子——你不必是個數學天才也能看出可能節省30%的成本挺不錯的。英國廣播公司(BBC)也這麼幹，電視喜劇《W1A》有段著名的情節就是諷刺該公司辦公桌的短缺。甚至英國央行行長也這麼幹。執掌英國央行後，馬克慍尼(Mark Carney)如此堅決地要做一個現代人，於是他帶上筆記本到各個不同部門佔用辦公桌（儘管保險起見，他還保留着自己私人辦公室的辦公桌）。
Yet this vision of the worker, a nomad who wanders around clutching the tools of his trade, which seems so very modern, is not at all new. Hot-desking was a 16th-century phenomenon. The only difference was that scribes lugged the desk — or deske — around with them from job to job. The deske was a legless wood box with a sloping top on which the scribe leaned as he wrote down the words of whoever hired him. The desks of both scribe and hot-desker tell a story of rootlessness, that they are brains for hire, and likely to move on whenever it suits them.
員工的這種形象——像遊牧民那樣帶着自己的謀生工具四處遊蕩——似乎十分現代，但一點也不新鮮。非固定辦公桌在16世紀就出現了。唯一的區別是當時的抄寫員是拖着桌子（deske，不同於現代英語中的桌子(desk)）輾轉於不同的工作地點。當時的桌子是一個沒有桌腿的木箱，桌面是傾斜的，抄寫員伏在傾斜的桌面上抄寫僱主讓他抄寫的文字。16世紀的抄寫員和現代使用非固定辦公桌的職員，他們的桌子都講述了一個漂泊不定的故事，他們是供僱傭的腦力勞動者，會在任何需要的時候轉換工作地點。
In the few hundred years between the deske and hotdesk, this piece of furniture has told a different story, which has been mainly about status.
從“deske”到“hotdesk”的幾百年間，這件傢俱講述了一個不同的故事，主要是關於地位。
The rule was simple: the larger it was and the more expensive the wood, the grander its occupant. The more the desk looked as if it might belong in a sitting room, the more distant its owner was pretending to be from the work itself, and therefore the greater the power.
規則很簡單：桌子越大，木材越昂貴，其佔有者就越是位高權重。桌子越像是本應放在客廳的桌子，其所有者越是假裝遠離工作，因此其權力就越大。
The desk was also a physical way to establish distance. All visits to an executive office took place with the exec on one side of his mammoth slab of a desk, and the visitor on the other. This a the executive to pull all sorts of tricks to remind everyone who had the upper hand. I remember visiting Lord Weinstock in his office at General Electric in the early 1990s to find him sitting in a pool of light on his side, while the visitor was expected to sit in darkness.
桌子也是一種實實在在製造距離的方式。所有造訪高管辦公室的情景，都是高管在他巨大的桌子的一邊，訪客則處於另一邊。這讓高管可以使盡各種招數提醒所有人誰佔了上風。我還記得上世紀90年代初造訪溫斯托克勳爵(Lord Weinstock)在GEC的辦公室，我發現他坐在一片光亮之中，而來訪者則要坐在黑暗裏。
The early white-collar workers stood or perched on stools at high wooden desks in damp basements and garrets, where they were quite likely to contract tuberculosis as well as eye strain.
早期的白領在潮溼的地下室和閣樓裏，站着或坐在凳子上，在高高的木桌旁工作，他們在工作中很可能會患上肺結核，或者眼疲勞。
But then when the first big office building went up at the end of the 19th century, clerks were seated at identical desks, arranged in lines like in a factory. Nearly 150 years later, offices might have football tables, but little has changed in the basic layout. In most offices workers are crowded into identical desks arranged in lines.
等到了19世紀末，第一批大型辦公樓建起來的時候，職員們都坐在一模一樣的桌子旁，像工廠裏那樣排列成行。近150年過去了，辦公室或許有了足球桌，但基本格局沒多大變化。在大多數辦公室裏，員工們依然擠在排列成行的相同辦公桌旁邊。
But then hierarchies started to topple, and overt displays of power expressed through size of furniture were out. The modern corporate ethos is all about openness. So meetings are held at sofas on which host and guest perch awkwardly, apparently equal, side by side.
然後，等級制度開始瓦解，通過傢俱的大小來公開展示權力的方式過時了。現代企業的理念都與開放性相關。因此，現在主客會面時是尷尬地並肩坐在沙發上，主客之間看上去地位平等。
In modern companies the CEO’s desk is likely to be identical in size and material to the desk of his PA (if he still has such a thing). No one believes this nod to equality — pay disparities are greater than ever, and the reverence shown to the top person is rising — but now it is vulgar to flaunt status through furniture.
在現代企業中，首席執行官的桌子可能和他的個人助理（如果他還有個人助理的話）的桌子擁有相同的大小和材質。沒人相信這代表平等——收入差距比以往任何時候都大，社會對金字塔頂端人物的崇敬也在上升——但現在通過傢俱來炫耀地位是庸俗的做法。
The current way to use your desk to show off is by dispensing with your chair. Indeed, in a reversion to the earliest offices, standing is back in.
現在利用你的桌子來炫耀的方式是拋棄你的椅子。事實上，最早的辦公室裏採用過的站立式工作又開始流行起來了。
But this time it is not fashionable employers can pack people in, and save on the cost of a chair — just the opposite. Workers no longer stand as a sign that employers do not care about their wellbeing, but as evidence that they do.
但這一次，這種方式的流行不是因爲僱主能夠在辦公室多塞進幾個人，以及節省椅子的成本——正好相反：員工站着工作不再證明僱主不關心他們的健康，而是證明他們關心。
Sitting, doctors will tell you, gives you diabetes, makes you obese and may kill you. Not only in fashionable companies such as Google and Facebook, the rows of people sitting at their desk are interrupted by people standing. Some of these desks are like normal ones on stilts, while others are elevator desks that can be either up or down depending on whether you feel like being on your feet or on your bottom.
醫生們會告訴你，久坐會讓你得糖尿病，讓你肥胖，甚至可能致死。現在，不僅是在谷歌(Google)和Facebook這樣時髦的公司，坐着辦公的人之間會間或出現一些站着辦公的人。這些桌子有的像是支高了的正常桌子，有的則是升降桌，可以根據你是想站着還是坐着自由調節高度。
Of higher status still is a treadmill desk, which allows you to do your spreadsheets while you walk on a moving loop of rubber. The message is not a subtle one and says: I care about fitness. I multitask, I do not waste a second of my valuable time. My company has spent a lot of money on me, and I don’t care if the noise of me galumphing along is distracting my colleagues.
地位更高的人可以用跑步機桌子，你可以一邊在移動的橡膠跑帶上行走一邊做電子表格。這透露出的訊息很明顯：我關心健康。我可以同時處理多個任務，我不會浪費我寶貴時間中的一分一秒。我的公司在我身上花了很多錢，我不在乎我行走的聲音會不會打擾我的同事。
Yet even this is not the last word in status. Not long ago LinkedIn did a series about where its “key influencers” worked. Here were lots of boring desks, many of them not unlike mine. But in the middle was a picture of Sir Richard Branson working with colleagues on a beach.
然而，即使如此，這也不是地位的終極象徵。不久前，領英(LinkedIn)製作了一個具有 “關鍵影響力的人物”(key influencer)在哪裏工作的系列活動。其中有很多乏味的桌子，很多和我的不無相像。但在中間有張理查德布蘭森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)和同事們在沙灘上工作的照片。
This is the ultimate status symbol: not to have a desk at all.
這纔是終極的地位象徵：根本就不用桌子。
