[originaltext]W: I hear you’re finally retiring at the end of this year, Brant.

W: I hear you’re finally retiring at the end of this year, Brant. What will you do with yourself when you’ve stopped work?
M: Absolutely nothing. I’ll have been working for this company nonstop for forty years by the end of October, and I think I deserve a complete rest.
W: Forty years! You’ll have seen a lot of changes in that time, I imagine.
M: Yes,[9]and most of the changes have only made things worse. I used to be proud of my work; but how can you take a pride in what you’re doing when every two or three years they put a new manager with newly fresh ideas in charge of the factory—and he tell you what you’ve been doing is all wrong?
W: Why have you stayed on all these years then, Brant?
M: Well, it’s the same thing wherever you go. However well you do your job, you don’t get promotion in any firm unless you’re a friend of the manager’s—and the present manager has certainly been no friend of mine.
W: Well, I don’t know. They don’t promote you, whoever you know, if you’re inefficient.
M: Nonsense! What about young fellow Chris? He’s an assistant manager already and he’s completely incompetent. He’s only there because he’s a relative of the managing director’s. They’ll probably make him a director soon!
W: By the sound of it you won’t be sorry to leave.
M: No I won’t, but it’ll be no better at home. Instead of the manager giving me stupid orders, it will be my wife. Now she will be telling me off all day long.
9. What is the man’s attitude toward the changes in his company?
10. What can lead to one’s promotion at work according to the man?
11. What does the man complain about after he gets retired?