高层还不如当一个邮差快乐

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,