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罗纳德·里根有句名言:“努力工作死不了人，但我想，为什么要冒险？”一旦超过一定程度，更多努力似乎只会适得其反。研究表明，每周工作达到50小时以后，员工工作效率会大幅下降。

即使这样，一些管理者仍然要求员工长时间呆在办公桌前。在血液检测公司Theranos，创始人伊丽莎白·霍姆斯当时的男朋友桑尼·巴尔瓦尼非常强调员工工时，他会在晚上7:30巡视工程部，检查是否还有人在办公桌前。公司最终倒闭时，所有这些时间都成了徒劳(检察官指控霍姆斯女士和巴尔瓦尼先生涉嫌欺诈)。

中国电子商务集团阿里巴巴创始人马云最近称赞“996”模式（员工每周工作六天，从早9点到晚9点），认为这是“天大的幸事”。实际上，马云先生也提到雇主不应该强制实行这样的时间。然而，加班是现代上班族的诅咒。

总有些时候你没有太多事可做，也许是因为在等待不同部门或不同公司其他人的反馈。随着时钟走过下午5点，呆在办公桌前可能已没有任何意义。但是你能看到老板还在努力工作，更重要的是，他们也能看到你。于是你努力让自己看起来很忙。

有时，这可能是个死循环。如果老板不想在下属之前回家，而下属又害怕早于老板离开，那么大家都陷入了僵局。如果看上去没有竭尽全力，员工会认为自己可能得不到加薪升职的机会。而看起来竭尽全力，很容易与工作时间长混淆。管理者通常不擅长判断员工表现，于是使用在办公室的时长代替。

结果往往是白费力气。把苏联一则老笑话改编一下，就是“我们假装工作，经理假装相信我们。”你不是在努力工作，而是努力让老板认为你是。把夹克留在办公椅上，故意拿着笔记本或写字板四处走动，以及在反常时间发送电子邮件是三个最著名的技巧。经过一段时间，这可能会导致集体自欺欺人，认为这种假装就是工作。

此外，这样的加班还有更严重的后果。人们即使在不舒服的时候也会去办公室，这种情况在日本可能最为普遍。但这样做对自己和雇主都没有任何好处。

这不仅会降低生产率，还会增加雇主的医疗支出。根据《职业与环境医学杂志》的一项研究，因此产生的医疗成本对雇主来说可能是员工旷工成本的六倍。举个例子，发表在《英国医学杂志》上的研究发现，员工腰痛还坚持上班，这样的事在日本发生的可能性是英国的三倍。结果，这些员工更容易经历更大的痛苦甚至抑郁。还有什么比痛却还要工作更令人沮丧呢？

这并不是说，雇主没有权利期望员工在办公室呆上一段合理的时间。工作中不可避免需要开一些会（最好是短会）。面对面地与同事相处会产生一种同志情谊，有助于有效交流思想，让员工更好地了解他们的共同需求。

从人类存在的漫长时间以来，加班不过是一种新现象。工业时代之前，大多数人在自己的农场或车间工作，并按产量获得报酬。工厂的出现是因为机器比家庭手工业的方式更高效，而且只有拥有资本的大雇主才负担得起。突然间，工人们得到报酬的依据不再是他们的产出，而是时间，他们被要求打卡上下班。

但是智能手机和笔记本电脑这样的现代设备是便携式的，在家里和在办公室一样能轻松使用。在目前日常工作高度自动化的情况下，办公室工作日益强调创新。把办公室变成监狱，囚犯只有晚上才能回家，对员工毫无帮助。为了高效工作，你需要“头脑在线”，而不仅是肉体。

原文拾粹：

The joy of absence

Ronald reagan famously quipped that “it’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?” Beyond a certain level, extra effort seems to be self-defeating. Studies suggest that, after 50 hours a week, employee productivity falls sharply.

1、quipped n.妙语；俏皮话；遁词；模棱两可的话，v.说俏皮话

2、self-defeating adj.达不到目的的；自我拆台的；有悖初衷的；适得其反的

But that doesn’t stop some managers from demanding that workers stay chained to their desk for long periods. At the blood-testing firm Theranos, Sunny Balwani, then boyfriend of the founder, Elizabeth Holmes, had an obsession with employee hours, and would tour the engineering department at 7.30pm to check people were at their desks. All those hours were wasted when the company eventually collapsed (prosecutors have charged Ms Holmes and Mr Balwani with fraud).

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce group, recently praised the “996” model, where employees work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, as a “huge blessing”. To be fair, Mr Ma said employers should not mandate such hours. Still, presenteeism is the curse of the modern office worker.

There will be days when you do not have much to do, perhaps because you are waiting for someone else in a different department, or a different company, to respond to a request. As the clock ticks past 5pm, there may be no purpose in staying at your desk. But you can see your boss hard at work and, more important, they can see you. So you make an effort to look busy.

3、As the clock ticks past 5pm，随着时钟走过下午5点，tick v.滴答滴答地过去，小词的运用，很形象

Some of this may be a self-perpetuating cycle. If bosses do not like to go home before their underlings, and underlings fear leaving before their bosses, everyone is trapped. Staff may feel that they will not get a pay rise, or a promotion, if they are not seen to be putting in maximum effort. This is easily confused with long hours. Managers, who are often no good at judging employees’ performance, use time in the office as a proxy.

4、self-perpetuating cycle，无线循环，死循环

The consequence is often wasted effort. To adjust the old joke about the Soviet Union: “We pretend to work and managers pretend to believe us.” Rather than work hard, you toil to make bosses think that you are. Leaving a jacket on your office chair, walking around purposefully with a notebook or clipboard and sending out emails at odd hours are three of the bestknown tricks. After a while this can result in collective self-delusion that this pretence is actual work.

5、We pretend to work and managers pretend to believe us.苏联的笑话原话是：“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.

6、toil v.苦干；辛勤劳动；艰难地行走，n.苦工；累活

7、self-delusion，自欺欺人

But presenteeism has more serious consequences. It is perhaps most prevalent in Japan, where people attend the office even when they are in discomfort. In doing so, they are doing neither themselves nor their employers any favours.

As well as reducing productivity, this can increase medical expenses for the employer. According to a study in the Journal of Occupation and Environmental Medicine, these costs can be six times higher for employers than the costs of absenteeism among workers. To take one example, research published in the British Medical Journal found that Japanese employees with lower-back pain were three times more likely to turn up for work than in Britain. As a result, those workers were more likely to experience greater pain and to suffer from depression. What could be more dispiriting than being in pain while feeling trapped at work?

8、turn up for work，上文用了attend the office，表达的多样性

None of this is to say that employers are not entitled to expect workers to be in the office for a decent proportion of time. Inevitably there will be a need for some (preferably short) meetings. Dealing with colleagues face-to-face creates a feeling of camaraderie, allows for a useful exchange of ideas and enables workers to have a better sense of their mutual needs.

9、None of this is to say that…，这些都不是说…

10、camaraderie [kɑməˈrɑdəri] n.同志情谊

In the grand sweep of humanity, presenteeism is a recent phenomenon. Before the industrial era, most people worked in their own farm or workshop and were paid for the amount they produced. Factories emerged because new machines were much more efficient than cottage-industry methods, and only a large employer with capital could afford them. Suddenly, workers were paid not for their output but for their time, and were required to clock in and out.

11、clock in and out，打卡上下班

But modern machinery like smartphones and laptops is portable. It can be used as easily at home as in the office. Turning an office into a prison, with inmates allowed home for the evenings, does nothing for the creativity that is increasingly demanded of office workers as routine tasks are automated. To be productive you need presence of mind, not being present in the flesh.

译者注：本文选自《经济学人》（2019年5月18日）

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