大学英语精读听力第四册 unit1

[00:00.00]College English Intensive Reading Book 4
[00:54.73]Unit One Text
[00:58.98]Two college-age boys,
[01:01.36]unaware the making money usually involves hard work,
[01:04.65]are tempted by an advertisement that promises them an easy way to earn a lot of money.
[01:10.48]The boys soon learn that if something seems too good to be true,it probably is.
[01:16.46]BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY    John G. Hubbell
[01:20.90]"You ought to look into this," I suggested to our two college-age sons.
[01:26.05]"It might be a way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all the time."
[01:31.79]I handed them some magazines in a plastic bag someone had hung on our doorknob.
[01:37.33]A message printed on the bag offered leisurely,lucrative work
[01:42.48]("Big Bucks the Easy Way!") of delivering more such bags.
[01:47.05]"I don't mind the indignity," the older one answered.
[01:50.89]I can live with it," his brother agreed.
[01:53.63]"But it pains me," I said,
[01:56.61]"to find that you both have been panhandling so long that it no longer embarrasses you
[02:01.07]The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing.
[02:05.91]Pleased, I left town on a business trip.
[02:09.56]By midnight I was comfortably settled in a hotel room far from home.
[02:14.55]The phone rang. It was my wife.
[02:17.69]She wanted to know how my day had gone.
[02:20.95]"Great!" I enthused.
[02:22.70]"How was your day?" I inquired.
[02:25.37]"Super!" she snapped."Just super!
[02:28.32]And it's only getting started.
[02:30.07]Another truck just pulled up out front."
[02:33.26]"Another truck?"
[02:34.69]"The third one this evening.
[02:36.97]The first delivered four thousand Montgomery Wards.
[02:40.31]The second brought four thousand Sears,Roebucks.
[02:43.78]I don't know what this one has,
[02:46.37]but I'm sure it will be four thousand of something.
[02:49.53]Since you are responsible, I thought you might like to know what's happening."
[02:55.65]What I was being blamed for, it turned out,
[02:58.89]was a newspaper strike which made it necessary to hand-deliver the advertising inserts
[03:04.64]that normally are included with the Sunday paper.
[03:07.41]The company had promised our boys $600
[03:11.43]for delivering these inserts to 4,000 houses by Sunday morning.
[03:15.69]"Piece of cake!" our older college son had shouted.
[03:19.42]"Six hundred bucks!" His brother had echoed, "And we can do the job in two hours!"
[03:25.25]"Both the Sears and Ward ads are four newspaper-size pages,"  my wife informed me.
[03:25.30]"There are thirty-two thousand pages of advertising on our porch.
[03:30.06]Even as we speak, two big guys are carrying armloads of paper up the walk.
[03:36.01]What do we do about all this?"
[03:38.65]"Just tell the boys to get busy," I instructed. "They're college men.
[03:43.66]They'll do what they have to do."
[03:43.66]At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent message to telephone my wife
[03:48.52]Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering.
[03:52.39]There had been several more truckloads of bad inserts.
[03:56.26]"They're for department stores,dime stores,drugstores,grocery stores,auto stores and so on
[04:04.72]Some are whole magazine sections.
[04:07.33]We have hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pages of advertising here!
[04:12.90]They are crammed wall-to-wall all through the house in stacks taller than your oldest son.
[04:18.59]There's only enough room for people to walk in,
[04:21.23]take one each of the eleven inserts,roll them together,
[04:25.07]slip a rubber band around them and slide them into a plastic bag.
[04:28.91]We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant in America!"
[04:32.11]Her voice kept rising,
[04:33.76]as if working its way out of the range of the human ear.
[04:37.52]"All this must be delivered by seven o'clock Sunday morning."
[04:41.07]"Well, you had better get those guys banding and sliding as fast as they can,
[04:46.51]and I'll talk to you later. Got a lunch date."
[04:49.25]When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.
[04:53.48]"Did you have a nice lunch?" she asked sweetly.
[04:56.93]I had had a marvelous steak,but knew better by now than to say so.
[05:01.48]"Awful," I reported. "Some sort of sour fish. Eel, I think."
[05:06.83]"Good. Your college sons have hired their younger brothers and sisters and a
[05:11.51]couple of neighborhood children to help for five dollars each.
[05:14.85]Assembly lines have been set up.
[05:16.89]In the language of diplomacy, there is'movement.'"
[05:20.70]"That's encouraging."
[05:22.84]"No,it's not," she corrected. "It's very discouraging.
[05:26.40]They've been at it for hours.
[05:28.23]Plastic bags have been filled and piled to the ceiling,
[05:31.15]but all this hasn't made a dent,not a dent,in the situation!
[05:35.77]It's almost as if the inserts keep reproducing themselves!"
[05:39.56]"Another thing,"she continued.
[05:41.99]"Your college sons must learn that one does not get the best out of employees
[05:46.64]by threatening them with bodily harm."
[05:49.15]Obtaining an audience with son No. 1, I snarled,
[05:52.99]"I'll kill you if you threaten one of those kids again! Idiot!
[05:57.06]You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the most bags."
[06:03.07]"But that would cut into our profit," he suggested.
[06:06.52]"There won't be any profit unless those kids enable you to make all the deliveries on time.
[06:12.55]If they don't, you two will have to remove all that paper by yourselves.
[06:17.20]And there will be no eating or sleeping until it is removed."
[06:20.99]There was a short, thoughtful silence.
[06:24.23]Then he said, "Dad,you have just worked a profound change in my personality."
[06:29.38]"Do it!""Yes, sir!"
[06:32.12]By the following evening,there was much for my wife to report.
[06:36.46]The bonus program had worked until someone demanded to see the color of cash.
[06:41.29]Then some activist on the work force claimed that the workers had no business settling for$5
[06:47.72]and a few competitive bonuses while the bosses collected hundreds of dollars each.
[06:53.41]The organizer had declared that all the workers were entitled to $5 per hour!
[06:58.95]They would not work another minute until the bosses agreed.
[07:03.02]The strike lasted less than two hours.
[07:06.05]In mediation, the parties agreed on $2 per hour.
[07:09.97]Gradually, the huge stacks began to shrink.
[07:13.60]As it turned out,the job was completed three hours before Sunday's 7 a.m.deadline.
[07:20.47]By the time I arrived home, the boys had already settled their accounts:
[07:24.84]$150 in labor costs,
[07:27.89]$40 for gasoline, and a like amount for gifts--
[07:31.78]boxes of candy for saintly neighbors who had volunteered station wagons and help in delivery
[07:37.64]and a dozen roses for their mother.
[07:40.07]This left them with $185 each --
[07:43.64]about two-thirds the minimum wage for the 91 hours they worked.
[07:48.08]Still, it was "enough", as one of them put it,
[07:51.72]to enable them to "avoid indignity" for quite a while.
[07:56.08]All went well for some weeks.
[07:56.40]Then one Saturday morning my attention was drawn to the odd goings-on of our two youngest sons
[08:03.04]They kept carrying carton after carton from various corners of the house out front door to curbside
[08:09.62]I assumed their mother had enlisted them to remove junk for a trash pickup.
[08:22.29]Then I overheard them discussing finances.
[08:25.64]"Geez, we're going to make a lot of money!"
[08:28.38]"We're going to be rich!"
[08:29.92]Investigation revealed that they were offering
[08:33.55]"for sale or rent" our entire library.
[08:37.39]"No! No!" I cried. "You can't sell our books!"
[08:40.84]"Geez, Dad, we thought you were done with them!"
[08:43.90]"You're never done with books," I tried to explain.
[08:47.53]"Sure you are. You read them,and you're done with them. That's it.
[08:51.47]Then you might as well make a little money from them.
[08:54.71]We wanted to avoid the indignity of having to ask you for..."