上星期，一位讀者給我發了封電子郵件。他督促我以更積極的態度迎接節日的到來。他請求我，別老是指責別人；還要我談談在過去幾年中，我最欣賞的書和文章。

A reader sent me an e-mail last week urging me to entersintosthe festive spirit by being more positive. Please, he asked, could I abandon the knocking copy and tell readers about the books and articles that I had enjoyed most over the past year?

    這是圣誕節額外的一個壓力：不但要努力工作，還要努力嘗試做一個好人。這對一個寫管理類文章的人而言，是件特別棘手的事：在這個圈子里，負面消極的東西實在太多，以至于要尋找點積極的東西，要比給寵壞的孩子挑選一樣完美的圣誕禮物還難。

This is one of the additional stresses of Christmas: not only do you work harder, you have to try to be a better person, too. It is particularly tricky when you write about management fads: the negative is in such lavishly abundant supply that tracking down the positive can be harder than searching for the elusive perfect Christmas present for one's spoilt children.

    所以我原本打算不理會他的請求。但是當我打開《哈佛商業評論》的時候，我陡然發現了一篇非常好的管理類文章，應該說是今年到現在為止讀到過的最好的管理類文章，也是本世紀最好的一篇管理類文章。無論是否是圣誕節，我都愿意將它和各位分享。

So I was intending to ignore his plea until I opened the Harvard Business Review and stumbled on the best article on management that I have read not just this year but this century. Christmas or no, I want to share it with everyone.

    這些觀點既不來自于企業經理，也非業界權威。她是茱迪斯•馬�。↗udith Martin），也即人們熟悉的禮儀小姐。她是個專欄作家，指導美國人的舉手投足。有關采訪她的文章刊登在《哈佛商業評論》的12月期刊上。

The source of these ideas is neither manager nor guru. She is Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, who writes columns telling Americans how to behave, and she is interviewed in the December issue.

    她認為，辦公室里新的禮儀時代已經到來。她說，杰克•韋爾奇（Jack Welch）推行無界線企業，那是百分百錯誤的想法。我們需要界線，而且需要很多。

She argues that the time has come for a new formality at work. Jack Welch was 100 per cent wrong in aiming for the boundaryless corporation, she says. What we need are boundaries - and lots of them.

    我明白，這句話正是我幾年來一直希望看到的。我已經看夠了不拘小節的主張，看夠了所謂我們是一個愉快的大家庭的說法，看夠了人們直呼其名，看夠了他們穿著保羅（Polo）T恤和斜紋棉褲上班，看夠了所謂我的大門永遠向您敞開的標榜，更別提所謂的同事間親密無間了。

I realise this is what I have been longing to read for years. I have had enough of informality. Enough of we're-just-a-big-happy-family. Enough first names. Enough polo shirts and chinos. Enough my-door-is-always-open. More than enough bonding sessions.

    而我想看到的是公司的等級制度，和一整套我們可以仰仗的商務禮節。我要的是：禮儀。

What I want now are fixed boundaries and a system of business etiquette that we can all rely on. I want manners.

    一直以來，人們都看老規矩行事。但據禮儀小姐稱，每隔200年左右，就會有一場“自然主義”運動企圖趕走這些規矩。但是，最后禮儀總是會回歸的。工作中的禮儀格外重要，它讓我們收起自己丑陋的一面，以取悅他人。

Man has always depended on ritual. Yet, according to Miss Manners, every 200 years or so there is a "naturalistic" movement that tries to sweep it away. Yet manners always come back eventually. They are particularly important at work as they enable us to package our ugly emotions in a way that is palatable to others.

    在過去的20年里，我們在辦公室里深深地陷入了一場自然主義者革命。管理層和人力資源專家大規模地拆除了公司的禮儀機制，他們還為這場破壞運動辯解說，沒有規矩可以讓我們更誠實、更靈活。對此，禮儀小姐的回答是，無論有沒有禮儀，辦公室里總有足夠誠實可信的人。

For the past two decades we have been in the thick of a naturalist revolution at work. Management and human resources experts have largely dismantled the machinery of corporate manners and have defended this destructive process with the claim that informality makes us more honest and more flexible. Miss Manners's reply to this is that there is quite enough honesty in the office, anyway.

    我對此不勝茍同。有各種微不足道的真相（比如同事們究竟如何看待我）是我不想知道的。但有些大事的真相應該讓老板知道，然而他們可能永遠無法發現。人們并非因為禮儀，才沒有把真相說出來，他們是擔心誠實會砸了自己的飯碗。

I could not agree more. There are all sorts of small truths I simply do not wish to know, such as precisely what my colleagues think of me. And on the big truths - the ones that bosses need to know but tend never to find out - it is not manners that stop people speaking up, it is fear that honesty will cost them their jobs.

    禮儀小姐還指責了如今充斥在辦公室中的假友誼，并嘲笑那些聲稱只要人們互相喜愛，就會有更好的行為舉止的言論。只要看一看夫妻間如何對待對方，就知道事情并非那么簡單了。

Miss Manners rails against the pseudo-friendliness that now dominates office life and ridicules the argument that if we like each other a lot, we will behave better. A glance at how husbands and wives behave towards each other shows that this simply is not the case.

    她還認為，缺乏規章制度是我們面臨過多性騷擾的罪魁禍首。由于沒有反對辦公室調情的相應禮節，我們只能依靠法律解決，但這種手段實在粗暴且具有破壞性。

She also thinks the absence of rules is to blame for the mess we are in over sexual harassment. As there is no etiquette that makes office flirting unacceptable, we rely instead on the law, a hopelessly blunt and destructive implement.

    她認為，唯一自覺對他人舉止文明的，是那些有辦公室戀情、卻不希望同事們發現的人。只有他們才會謹小慎微，保持著一種職業的冷漠態度。照此推論，我們是不是都應該想象自己與辦公室里的同事發生了秘密戀情？這點她倒沒有說。這種觀點并不令人愉快，事實上，粗魯得很。

According to her, the only people who know how to behave towards each other are - oddly enough - those who areshavingsan office affair but do not want their colleagues to find out. Only they are scrupulous about maintaining a professional aloofness. Whether the corollary is that we should all imagine ourselves to be engaged in secret affairs with everyone in the office, she does not say. The thought is not a pleasing one. Indeed, it is rude in the extreme.

    但除此之外，她倒是提出了一些有益而合理的辦公室禮節：一、老板不應該給秘書買禮物。錢是唯一得到認可的對優秀業績的嘉獎。二、辦公室同事不應該一起到鄉村度假。這是一個極妙的建議，但是公司往往重視不夠。周末，如果你和同事們一塊在郊外的豪華別墅賓館分享所謂的“真相”，但是到頭來大家關系是越來越糟糕。三、工作就是娛樂，這句話從措辭上看就有矛盾。她說：“要求人們不計報酬地工作，這本身就不公平。更糟的是，它侵犯了個人生活的權利�！边@個女人實在是太棒了。

Otherwise she has some good, sound rules. 1. Bosses should not buy their secretaries presents. The only acceptable reward for a job well done is money. 2. Nobody should ever go on an office retreat. This is fantastic advice and cannot be said often enough. Nothing makes you despise your colleagues more than spending a weekend together sharing "truths" about yourselves in a plush country house hotel somewhere. 3. Business entertaining is a contradiction in terms. "Asking people to labour without pay is not fair. Worse, it cutssintostheir personal lives," she says. This woman is fantastic.

    她的主張唯一有錯的地方，是她說得還不夠。總的來說，沒有規矩的主張是希望我們更熱愛本職工作。這種友善是為了使我們更愉快。事實上，它卻讓我們更不喜歡工作了。工作和家庭生活的模糊界限使我們有種錯覺，似乎工作應該和休閑活動一樣讓我們樂在其中。以此標準來評價工作的話，它總是不能盡如人意。相反，如果我們把工作看成是一塊有著明確規章制度的獨立領域，我猜，我們會得到更大的滿足。

The only thing wrong with her argument is that she does not go far enough. The new informality is generally supposed to make us like our jobs more. The friendliness is meant to make us happier. In fact, it surely makes us like our work less. The blurring of divisions between work and home lulls us sintosa sense that work is going to be as actively enjoyable as leisure. Judged thus, it is always going to fall short. If, instead, we viewed work as an isolated realm with its own precise rules, I suspect we would find greater satisfaction.

    在這里我產生了一種盲目樂觀，我希望在企業的混亂狀態持續20年之后，禮儀和規矩正在漸漸回歸。無可否認，盡管這些回歸的跡象還很微小，但只要你努力去找，它們的確是存在著的。

My hope - and here I am showing a seasonally Pollyanna-ish streak - is that manners and formality are on the way back, after 20 years in the corporate wilderness. Admittedly the signs are small but they are there if you look for them hard enough.

    如今，我收到的許多電子郵件都使用了正規字體。隨隨便便的小寫字母越來越罕見。辦公室裝扮可能更加職業化了。值得一提的是，《哈佛商業評論》留出這樣一個空間，讓禮儀小姐此等古板而堅持禮儀的人發表意見。二三年前，當工作就是娛樂這種狂熱達到頂峰的時候，她那充滿智慧的言論極具破壞性，無論如何是不可能登上這樣一本負有聲望的雜志的。

Many of the e-mails I now get are laid out like formal letters. Sloppy lower-case ones are becoming a rarity. Office dress is possibly getting a bit smarter. And the very fact that the HBR is giving so much space to a fusty stickler for form such as Miss Manners in itself says something. Two or three years ago - at the height of the work-is-fun craze - her excellent good sense would have been simply too subversive to be published in a respectable magazine.

    譯者/喜喜