2. 职称英语
  3. During the long vacation I was accepted as a trainee bus conductor. I found

During the long vacation I was accepted as a trainee bus conductor. I found

游客2024-08-18  38
问题     During the long vacation I was accepted as a trainee bus conductor. I found the job fiercely demanding even on a short route with a total of about two dozen passengers. I pulled the wrong tickets, forgot the change and wrote up my log at the end of each trip in a way that drew hollow laughter from the inspectors. The inspectors were likely to swoop at any time. A conductor with twenty years’ service could be dismissed if an inspector caught him accepting money without pulling a ticket. If a hurrying passenger pressed the fare into your hand as he leapt out of the back door, it was wise to tear a ticket and throw it out after him. There might be a plain-clothes inspector following in an unmarked car.
    I lasted about three weeks all told. The routes through town were more than the mind could stand even in the off-peaked hours. All the buses from our depot and every other depot would be crawling nose to tail through the town while the entire working population of Sydney fought to get aboard. It was hot that summer: 100~ Fahrenheit every day. Inside the bus it was 30° hotter still. It was so jammed inside that my feet weren’t touching the floor. I couldn’t blink the sweat out of my eyes. There was no hope of collecting any fares. At each stop it was all I could do to reach the bell-push that signaled the driver to close the automatic doors and get going. I had no way of telling whether anybody had managed to get on or off. My one object was to get that bus up Pitt Street.
    In these circumstances I was scarcely to blame. I didn’t even know where we were, but I guessed we were at the top just before Market Street. I pressed the bell, the doors puffed closed, and the bus surged forward. There were shouts and yells from down the back, but I thought they were the angry cries of passengers who had not got on. Too late did I realize that they were emanating from within the bus. The back set of automatic doors had closed around an old lady’s neck as she was getting on. Her head was inside the bus. The rest of her, carrying a shopping bag was outside. I knew none of this at the time.
    When I at last cottoned on to the fact that something untoward was happening and signaled the driver to stop, he crashed to a halt and opened the automatic doors, whereupon the woman dropped to the road. She was very nice about it. Perhaps the experience had temporarily dislocated her mind. Anyway she apologized to me for causing so much trouble. Unfortunately, the car behind turned out to be full of inspectors. Since it would have made headlines if a university student had been thrown off the buses for half-executing a woman of advanced years, I was given the opportunity to leave quietly. Once again this failed to coincide with my own plans in the sense that I had already resigned. In fact, I had made my decision at about the same time as the old lady hit the ground. [br] What do we learn about the inspectors in the first paragraph?
选项 A、They found the writer amusing.
B、They never wore uniforms.
C、They were forced by employees.
D、They distrusted older employees.
答案 C
解析
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