If you have ever gone through a toll booth(收费所), you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate you'll ever have. It is one of life's frequent affairs: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off.
Late one morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward a booth. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the man was dancing.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm having a party," he said.
"What about the rest of the people?" I looked at the other toll booths.
He said, "What do those look like to you?" He pointed down the row of toll booths.
"They look like……toll booths. What do they look like to you?"
He said, "Vertical coffins. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home. For eight hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through the motions."
I was amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology about his job. Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. I could not help asking the next question: "Why is it different for you? You're having a good time."
He looked at me. "I knew you were going to ask that. I don't understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, and the Berkeley hills. Half the Western world vacations here……and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing."
小题1:According to the first paragraph, in most cases, how do you describe the relationship between drivers and toll booth?
A．most intimate
B．very tense
C．pretty ordinary
D．extremely hostile小题2:Why did the author go to San Francisco?
A. To attend a party
B. B. To have a meal
C. To dance with the worker in the toll booth
D. To hand in the repair fee of his car
小题3:The underlined name “Lazarus” mentioned in the eighth paragraph probably refers to a person___________.
A. who was very active in his life
B. B. who was dead and revived from death
C. who was going to San Francisco
D. who liked dancing at work
小题4:According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A．The author passed by the toll booth every day.
B．The worker enjoyed his work very much.
C．Only western people like to spend their holidays in the Berkeley hills.
D．The dancing worker was getting badly along with his colleagues.小题5:After hearing what the worker said, the author would probably_________.
A．go to the worker’s senior to complain about his bad attitude towards job.
B．go climbing the Golden Gate and the Berkeley hills to have a vacation.
C．learn to take a positive attitude to job and appreciate valuable things in life.
D．go back home instead of wasting time traveling to San Francisco.
