职场那些糟心事

重点内容

听力原文 / 对话稿

Speaker A: I'll never forget the first time I met our new contact from Retrolink, one of our top five customers. I had travelled to their office to meet him in person, talk about the history of our companies together and define a shared vision for future co-operation. I wanted to focus on building a good relationship with him which would be a good foundation for working together.

So, when we met I wanted to make a good impression and also show him respect. I greeted him with a handshake and addressed him by his surname. When I put my hand out I realised he had been moving in to give me a hug, so we did an awkward mixture of the two! Also, when I greeted him by his surname, he responded politely, though he used my first name. It was all a little uncomfortable.

In this situation, I guess I made assumptions about the level of formality he expected. Even though he had never met me before, he knew our two companies had been doing business with each other for years and he wanted to build on that history by being less formal with me from the beginning. The real learning here for me was that I shouldn't assume we all have the same ideas about meeting people for the first time.

Speaker B: I'd never worked with a virtual team on an international project before. It was quite exciting, though also challenging to work with people from different countries, many of whom I would never actually get to meet in person. There were a lot of things that were different about working in the same office and it was quite challenging at the beginning.

For example, there were different time zones, different IT systems and even different local regulations, which impacted on what each person was allowed to, or able to, do for the project.

There were also interpersonal differences, such as different ways of working, approaches to deadlines and when to reply to emails. And we shouldn't forget the fact that English was the project language and that most people on the team had to work in a language which wasn't their first. A positive of this was that it meant that everyone, including the native English speakers, had to make the effort to communicate clearly and clarify their own and everyone else's understanding. [反直觉的观点：母语者反而也要更努力沟通清楚，这一点值得留意]

To help us all get on the same page, we defined the communication norms and the rules the team would follow, as well as the meeting dates and deadlines. We laid this all out in a document called a team or project charter. This was really useful and in the end the project was a great success. I'm looking forward to working on my next international project.

Speaker C: I went through a bit of a rough patch last year at work. I was already committed to too much and then we lost a team member through restructuring and I quickly became overloaded. This led to me doing too much overtime and feeling very stressed. My boss was really helpful and she pushed back against the unrealistic targets that had been set for our department. She also introduced me to the smart approach to goal setting. It's an acronym, S-M-A-R-T. You use it to create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

I used this approach to deal with all of the things that were overloading me. It helped me to prioritise some tasks, to do some later and to drop some completely.

I often use this approach now and feel much more in control of my time and workload.

Speaker D: Have you ever missed a flight or had one cancelled? I did. It happened to me last week. My flight home from a business trip was the last one of the day and we were told it was going to be delayed. That's always a risk at the end of each day. The ground crew kept extending the delay until eventually they cancelled the flight completely. They then told us to go back through the airport to the departures area to talk to their agent who would organise hotels for everyone and rebook us on the following day's flight.

As soon as they made the announcement about the cancellation, I knew I had to think quickly as it would not be likely that the flight would have capacity to take everyone from my cancelled flight. I hurried back through the airport and was one of the first to make it to the desk. That turned out to be a good idea, as there were only nine seats available on the flight the next morning. Everyone else had to fly to a different airport and then continue back to our destination airport in coaches. Lucky me! Right? [反讽语气结尾，字面是"我真幸运"，实际带一点自嘲/无奈]

英文原文之后，附上对应的中文翻译：

说话人 A：我永远不会忘记第一次见到我们新客户 Retrolink（我们前五大客户之一）联系人的那次经历。我专程飞去他们的办公室跟他当面见面，聊聊两家公司过去的合作历史，一起定下未来合作的共同愿景。我想专注在跟他建立良好关系上，这会是我们未来合作的良好基础。 见面时，我想给他留下好印象，也想表示尊重。我伸手跟他握手，用他的姓来称呼他。结果我伸出手的时候才发现，他其实正准备给我一个拥抱，于是我们做出了一个尴尬的「握手加拥抱」混合动作！而且，我用姓称呼他，他礼貌地回应了，但他用的是我的名字。整个过程都有点不自在。 在这种情况下，我猜我对他期望的正式程度做了错误的假设。尽管他从没见过我，但他知道我们两家公司已经合作多年，他想借着这段历史，从一开始就用比较不正式的方式跟我相处。我从这件事学到的是：不该假设所有人对「第一次见面」这件事有一样的想法。

说话人 B：我以前从没在跨国项目里跟一个虚拟团队合作过。这既让人兴奋，又充满挑战——要跟来自不同国家的人合作，其中很多人我实际上根本没机会见到面。跟在同一间办公室工作相比，有很多地方都不一样，一开始颇具挑战。 比如说，时区不一样，IT 系统不一样，甚至各地的法规也不一样，这些都影响到每个人能做什么、被允许做什么。 还有人际方面的差异，比如工作方式不同，对截止日期的态度不同，回复邮件的时间习惯也不同。而且不要忘了，项目语言是英语，团队里大多数人用的都不是自己的母语在工作。这样做的一个好处是，这意味着每个人，包括那些英语母语者，都必须努力把话讲清楚，也要努力去确认自己和别人是不是真的理解对了。 为了让大家步调一致，我们制定了沟通规范和团队要遵守的规则，还定下了会议日期和截止日期。我们把这些都写进一份叫做「团队章程」或「项目章程」的文件里。这份文件真的很有用，最后这个项目也非常成功。我很期待接下来的下一个国际项目。

说话人 C：去年我在工作上经历了一段挺难熬的日子。我原本就已经承担了太多任务，后来公司重组又让我们失去了一名团队成员，我很快就变得超负荷。这导致我加了太多班，压力非常大。我的老板帮了我很大的忙，她顶住压力，反对部门被设定的那些不切实际的指标。她还教我用 SMART 目标设定法。这是个缩写，S-M-A-R-T，用来制定「具体、可衡量、可实现、相关、有时限」的目标。 我用这个方法来处理所有让我超负荷的事情。它帮我把一些任务排出优先顺序，一些延后处理，一些则直接放弃。 我现在也常常用这个方法，感觉自己对时间和工作量的掌控感强多了。

说话人 D：你有没有错过航班或者航班被取消过？我有过，就在上周。我出差回家的那趟航班是当天最后一班，结果被通知会延误。每天最后一班总是有这个风险。地面工作人员一直延长延误时间，最后干脆直接取消了航班。他们让我们回到机场的出发大厅，去找他们的工作人员，由对方帮大家安排酒店，并改签到第二天的航班。 一宣布取消航班，我就知道自己得赶快反应，因为不太可能有一趟航班能容纳我们这趟被取消航班上的所有人。我赶忙穿过机场，是最先赶到柜台的几个人之一。事后证明这是个正确的决定，因为第二天早上那趟航班只剩九个座位。其他所有人都得飞到另一个机场，再坐大巴转回我们原本的目的地机场。我可真幸运，是吧？

关键句 & 生词

听力技巧

• 四段独白之间没有过渡语提示话题转换，练习在每段开头快速抓住「这是关于什么场景」（客户会面/跨国团队/职场压力/航班取消），再进入细节。
• 留意说话人在叙述最后加的「反思句」——每段独白结尾几乎都有一句总结性的领悟（"the real learning here was..."、"Lucky me! Right?"），这句话往往是整段独白的重点，而不是中间的细节描述。
• 练习听懂缩写展开（S-M-A-R-T 五个字母对应的完整单词），职场英语里常把长概念压缩成缩写再逐字展开说明。

Sources

Blog / Website：

1. Challenges at work – LearnEnglish (British Council)