英语散文:我怎样白手起家

The counterman scooped‘用勺舀’out Sumatran coffee beans, ground‘grind的过去式。磨；碾碎’them, put the grounds in a filter‘过滤器’ in the cone and poured hot water over them to give me a sample of their product. When he handed me the coffee, the aroma enveloped‘笼罩；掩盖’my entire face. I took a tentative‘实验性的；试探性的’sip.

柜台服务员用勺子舀出少许苏门答腊咖啡豆，磨成粉，倒入滴滤式咖啡壶的滤格，浇下热水，冲一杯咖啡供我品尝。他把杯子递过来时，咖啡的香气笼罩了我的脸。我浅尝了一口。

Whoa. My eyes shot wide open. It was stronger than any coffee I had ever tasted. By comparison, I realized, the coffee I had been drinking was swill‘洗碟水；泔水’. That night I had dinner with one of Starbucks's owners, Jerry Baldwin. I had never heard anyone talk about a product the way Jerry talked about coffee. He wasn't just calculating‘算计’ how to maximize‘使增加/扩大到最大限度’ sales. He and his partner, Gordon Bowker, believed they were providing customers with something they ought to enjoy. It was an approach to business that was fresh and appealing‘动人的；有吸引力的’to me.

"哇！"我心里赞叹，不由得两眼圆睁。这是我有生以来所喝过的最浓烈的咖啡，以前喝的咖啡相形之下像洗碟水。当晚我跟明星咖啡连锁公司的股东杰里·巴登一起吃饭。我以前从未见过有谁像他谈咖啡那样谈论某些产品。巴登不只是努力推销而已：他和合伙人戈登·博格都相信，他们所卖的都是顾客会喜爱的东西。这样的经商态度令我耳目一新，也为之心折。

Inexplicable Attraction
不可言喻的吸引力

I tried to persuade Jerry Baldwin to hire me-although it did not seem to be a logical career move. Taking a job at Starbucks would mean giving up my job and Sheri's job-and for what? Moving across the country to join a tiny outfit ‘公司；机构’with four coffee stores? It didn't make sense to my friends or family, especially my mother. "You're doing well-you have a future," she argued. "Don't give it up for a small company nobody's heard of ."

我想说服巴登雇用我--老实说，此举似乎并不明智。我如果去明星咖啡连锁公司上班，就必须辞去现在的职位，而我的妻子也必须放弃现在的工作。我的亲友，尤其是母亲，都认为我的想法没有道理。"你现在干得很不错--前途远大，"她劝道："不要为一个谁都没有听说过的小公司而放弃现在的工作。"

I thought of the loss of security‘保障’, remembering how when I was seven my father had broken his ankle at work. He was stuck at home for more than a month. He was a truck driver delivering diapers‘尿布’, so when he didn't work, he didn't get paid. Our family had no income, no health insurance‘保险’-nothing to fall back on. That image of my father-slumped‘垂头弯腰地坐’on the couch, leg in a cast-was burned into my mind.

我考虑的是失去保障，不禁想起7岁那年父亲工作时摔断踝骨，在家里困了一个多月的往事。他的职业是开卡车运送尿布，不上班就没有工资，我们一家人的生活顿时陷入困境。他一条腿裹着石膏颓然坐在长沙发上的情景，深深印在我的记忆中。