How can someone, hour after hour, day after day, year in and year out, tighten approximately the same nut to the same bolt and not go mad? That most working people do not, in fact, go mad is due in large measure to a phenomenon so common that it is found wherever people labor in industry: taking it easy. It would take some kind of real mental case to do all the work one could all day long. No one expects it. Taking it easy on the job while someone else covers your work, or "working on and off," as it is usually called in America, is an established part of the working life.
Working on and off, however, has its limits. The rules are infinitely varied, subtle, and flexible, and, of course, they are always changing. Management, up to a certain level at least, is aware of the practice, and in some industries employs entire cadres of people to curtail or put an end to it. Simultaneously, the workers are subtly doing their best to keep it going and to extend it wherever possible.
Every worker has a highly developed sense of how much work is expected of him. When he feels that the expectation is excessive, he tries to do something about it. This instinct has to do with the political nature of work itself, something every modern worker understands. The bosses want more from the worker than they are willing to give in return. The workers give work, and the bosses give money. The exchange is never quite equal, and the discrepancy is called profit. Since the bosses cannot do without profit, workers have an edge. A good worker in a key spot could, so long as he kept up production, take all the coffee breaks he wanted, and the bosses would very likely look the other way. He could also choose to cut down on the coffee breaks, apply himself, and increase production, and then ask for and get more money. But that would be self-defeating, and he knows it. It would also place him in competition with other workers, which would be playing into the bosses' hands. What he would rather do is create some slack for himself and enjoy his job more.
At present on the West Coast, when a gang of longshoremen working on cargo start a shift, they often divide themselves into two equal groups and toss a coin. One group goes into the far reaches of the ship's hold and sits around. The other group starts loading cargo, usually working with a vengeance, since each one of them is doing the work of two men. An hour later, the groups change places. In other words, although my fellow longshoremen and I are getting paid for eight hours, on occasion we work only four. If someone reading this feels a sense of moral outrage because we are sitting down on the job, I am sorry. I have searched my mind in vain for a polite way to tell that reader to go to hell.
If you are that reader, I would recommend that you abandon your outrage and begin thinking about doing something similar for yourself. You probably already have, even if you won't admit it. White collar office workers, too, have come under criticism recently for robbing their bosses of their full-time services. Too much times is being spent around the Mr. Coffee machine, and some people (would you believe it?) have even been having personal conversations on company time. In fact, one office-system expert recently said that he had yet to encounter a business work place that was functioning at more than about 60 percent efficiency.
Management often struggles hard to set up a situation where work is done in series: a worker receives an article of manufacture, does something to it, and passes it on to another worker, who does something else to it and then passes it on to the next guy, and so on. The assembly line is a perfect example of this. Managers like this type of manufacture because it is more efficient - that is, it achieves more production. They also like it for another reason, even if they will not admit it: it makes it very difficult for the worker to do anything other than work.
Frederick W. Taylor, the efficiency expert who early in this century conducted the time-and-motion studies that led to the assembly-line process, tried to reduce workers to robots, all in the name of greater production. His staff of experts, each armed with clipboard and stopwatch, studied individual workers with a view toward eliminating unnecessary movement. They soon found a great deal of opposition from the workers.
Most people not directly engaged in daily work express disapproval when they hear of people working on and off. A studied campaign with carefully chosen language - "a full day's work for a full day's pay," "taking a free ride" - has been pushed by certain employers to discredit the practice, and their success is such that I rarely discuss it except with other workers. My response is personal, and I feel no need to defend it: If I am getting a free ride, how come I am so tired when I go home at the end of a shift?
一个人怎么能时复一时，年复一年地把几乎相同的螺帽拧到相同的螺栓上而不发疯的呢？事实上，多数劳动者并不发疯多半是由于"不紧不慢"的现象很平常，在企业中只要有人工作的地方随处可见这种现象。一个人恐怕要有某种真正的精神病才能一整天竭尽全力地干活。没人希望这样。在别人帮你干活时，你就不紧不慢地干，也就是像美国人常说的那种"干干停停"是工作生涯的一个既定部分。
然而，干干停停有它的局限性。这些惯例的变化无休无止，很微妙、很有弹性。当然，它们总在变。至少在一定程度上管理部门知道这种做法。一些企业雇佣干部以减少或结束这种做法。同时，工人们巧妙地、尽全力使之继续下去并使之触及到可能的任何地方。
每个工人对自己干多少活都是高度敏感的。当他感到希望他做的事过多时，就会采取某些措施。这种天性与每个现代工人所懂得的工作本身的政治特性有关。老板希望从工人身上得到的比他们给予的要多；工人付出劳动，老板付出报酬。这个交换从来不会太平等，此差异叫做利润。由于老板不能没有利润，工人们就占了上风。一个在关键岗位的好工人，只要他保持产量不降低，可以随心所欲地利用工间休息，而老板可能装作没看见。工人也可以缩短工间休息，卖力干活，增加生产，然后要求并得到更多的钱。但他知道那是违背自己利益的，这样做也会将自己置于与他人竞争之中，这种竞争会有利于老板。那么，他宁愿为自己创造一些空闲，更好的享受工作。
目前在西海岸，从事船货装卸工作的一伙码头装卸工开始轮班时，经常分成两组，然后掷硬币决定先后顺序。一组走到船舱深处分散坐下。另一组开始装货，通常干得卖力，因为他们每人干着两人的活，一小时以后两组交位置换。换句话说，虽然我和工友们获得八小时的报酬，有时却只干四小时。如果有人读到此，为我们怠工而愤慨的话，我很抱歉。我白费心机的绞尽脑汁想找到一个礼貌的说法，但现在要告诉这位读者，让他见鬼去吧。
如果你是那个读者，我会劝你不要愤慨，开始为自己考虑一下类似的事情。即便你不承认，你可能已经想过了。近来，白领职员也由于不为老板全天服务而受到批评。在电煮咖啡机旁花了太多的时间。一些人甚至在工业时间进行私人交谈。事实上，一个办公制度专家近来说，他还没有遇到工作效率高于60%的商业网点。
管理部门经常努力创建一条龙式的工作：一个人接到产品后为之做些什么，把它传给另外一个工人，这个工人再做些什么，然后传给下一个工人，如此类推。装配线就是一个极好的例子。经理喜欢这种生产方式，因为它效率更高，也就是说能生产出更多的产品来。尽管老板不会承认，但还有另一个喜欢这种方式的原因，它使工人很难做工作以外的其他事情。
弗雷德里克·W·泰勒，是本世纪初进行时间和运动研究的效率专家，这种研究产生了装配线工序。他试图把工人变成机器人，只是为了更大的产量。他的专家组每人配有带弹簧夹子的书写板和秒表用来研究每个工人，使他们不能偷懒。很快他们发现工人们特别反对这种做法。
大多数不直接从事日常工作的人听到人们"干干停停"地工作时，会表示不赞同。一些雇主推行了一场预先计划的运动，和"全天工作付全天报酬""只拿钱不干活"这些精心选择的语言来诋毁这种做法。除了同其他工人，我很少谈起他们的成功。我的回答是个人观点，我感到没必要为之辩护：拿钱不干活，我下班回家后怎么会那么累呢？
