昨晚，我做了自己感到疲倦时通常会做的事情——拿出套装的《广告狂人》(Mad Men)，让自己沉浸在二十世纪60年代麦迪逊大道(Madison Avenue)魅力十足的享乐主义世界里。在那个时候，女性都拥有38DDD罩杯；男人们都在痛饮苏格兰威士忌，从午后直到深夜；所有人都一颗接一颗地吸烟；只要有机会，就会来上一段绯闻。
这部美剧让人感到愉悦，因为它与刻板的现代职场生活大相径庭。过去10天发生的两件事情，让我觉得这种束缚绷得更紧了。事实上，束缚得太紧了，正在切断人们的脑部供氧。
第一件事情，是导致马克•赫德(Mark Hurd)辞去惠普(Hewlett-Packard)首席执行官的性丑闻。就性丑闻而言，这桩丑闻毫无性感可言。事实上，根据新闻报道，这桩丑闻根本就没有涉及性。没有骚扰，也没有宽衣解带。然而，赫德和那位女性顾问之间“密切的个人关系”还是违反了公司规定，因此，必须采取行动。
英国《金融时报》一周前的标题是“零容忍”。但对什么零容忍呢？我阅读了新闻报道和企业新闻稿，能够找到唯一可咒骂的事情，是赫德与这位女士数次共同进餐，餐费被记在了公司账上。人们判定，这种行为的严重程度已足以让赫德一边桦树条抽打自己，一边说：“我没能达到我在惠普所推崇的信任、尊重、诚实的原则和标准”。
但这是些什么标准呢？他又如何违背了这些标准？
由于果断行动、驱逐当初表现英勇的首席执行官，人力资源部门受到了人们的祝贺。行动或许是果断的，但作出的却是一个软弱的决定。他们认定，放弃一个好的首席执行官，要比承认他在人品上略有瑕疵更好。代价是惨痛的：该公司股票市值一夜之间蒸发了100亿美元，声名扫地的赫德离开了公司，带着用自己痛苦换来的丰厚补偿。
所有细节中最让人困惑的是，那几餐饭似乎花费了2万美元。对于如此高昂的餐费，我能想到的唯一解释是，或许赫德和那位女士是在自我安慰——既然没能弄出点艳事，只能用狂吃海喝代替了。
现代版的惠普式性丑闻以丑闻见长，在“性”上却颇有不足，而在《广告狂人》中，情况则恰恰相反：在“性”上浓墨重彩，对丑闻却淡然处之。后者整体上似乎更为健康，尤其是对持股人而言。
在虚构的广告公司Sterling Cooper里，男女关系乱作一团，人们受到伤害，怀的孩子也不是自己老公的。虽然付出了人身成本，但公司本身却毫发无损，制作和销售广告的业务也未受影响。这一切包含着令人愉悦的简单和纯真。员工们工作，干点“坏事”，然后接着工作。
他们在Sterling Cooper还做着美国人40年都未做的事情：酗酒。
上周发生的第二件事情，表明了反酗酒运动的狂热程度已到了何种极端水平。在蒙特利尔管理学会(Academy of Management in Montreal)，有人提交的一篇论文证明：仅仅端起一杯酒，就可能毁掉你的职业生涯。在迄今为止进行过的最让人郁闷的实验中，组织者要求610名经理人在宴会上观察那些参加面试的候选人。面试官点了红酒；一些面试者也点了红酒，另一些却点了汽水。尽管这些应聘者并没有把酒杯端到嘴边，但按照评判，那些面前摆着一杯芬达的人，比面前摆着红酒的人更聪明。
看着《广告狂人》里的唐•德雷珀(Don Draper)将比红酒烈的多的东西举到嘴边，都未让我怀疑他的聪明才智；它让我对那些不醉无归的日子充满了渴望。只有对于20世纪80年代舰队街(Fleet Street)日子——当时记者们每天都在午餐时间溜到酒吧——的记忆，会令我这种怀旧之情稍减。如果我的记忆没错的话，那时的人们看起来并不像唐•德雷珀。他们有着巨大的将军肚，有时下午说话都含糊不清。
在《广告狂人》的世界里，欲望和酒精扭曲了人们的判断。但在清教徒式的现代商业世界，判断被更为致命的东西所扭曲：对欲望和酒精的恐惧。这两种世界都算不上好，但第一种显然比第二种强：人们至少可以间歇性地享受生活。
译者/杨卓
Last night, I did what I always do when I'm feeling jaded. I got out my boxed set of Mad Men and immersed myself in the hedonistic, glamorous world of Madison Avenue in the 1960s, when all women were a 38 DDD cup, all men drank scotch from lunchtime until bedtime, everyone chain-smoked and fornicated whenever they got the chance.
The show is delightful because of its contrast to the dreariness of modern, strait-laced office life. In the past 10 days, two things have happened that make me think the laces are now pulled too tight; so tight, in fact, that they are cutting off the oxygen to people's heads.
The first was the sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of Mark Hurd as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. As sex scandals go, this one was scandalously unsexy. Indeed, according to news reports, there was no sex in it at all. There was no harassment, no hanky or panky, yet the “close personal relationship” between Mr Hurd and a female consultant nevertheless breached the company's rules and action therefore needed to be taken.
“Zero tolerance” read the headline in the Financial Times a week ago. But zero tolerance of what? I have read the news stories and press releases and the only damning thing I could find was that Mr Hurd and the woman had some dinners together that were put on expenses. This was judged grave enough to cause Mr Hurd to beat himself with the birch rod, saying: “I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP.”
But what standards were these? And how didn't he live up to them?
The HR board was congratulated for acting decisively in ousting the formerly heroic CEO. It may have been decisive but the decision was a feeble one. It decided that it would be better to lose a good CEO than to admit that he was a slightly flawed human being. The price was heavy: shareholders lost $10bn overnight in the value of their shares, while the disgraced Mr Hurd left the company with a fat pay-out for his pains.
The most puzzling detail about it all is that the meals appear to have cost $20,000. The only explanation I can think of for such a big bill is that perhaps Mr Hurd and the woman comforted themselves for being unable to commit adultery by committing gluttony instead.
While the modern, Hewlett-Packard-style sex scandal is long on scandal and short on sex, in Mad Men things are the other way round: heavy on sex, light on scandal. This seems healthier all round, particularly as far as shareholders are concerned.
At Sterling Cooper, the fictional ad agency, the fornication is messy and people get hurt and babies get conceived out of wedlock. There is a human cost but the agency itself escapes unscathed and the business of writing and selling ads goes on unaffected. There is a delightful simplicity and innocence to all this. Employees work, behave badly and then work some more.
They also do something else at Sterling Cooper that no one does
40 years on in America: drink.
The second thing that happened last week shows just how extreme the anti-booze fanaticism has become. At the Academy of Management in Montreal, a paper was presented proving that simply holding a glass of wine can damage your career. In the most dismal experiment ever carried out, 610 managers were asked to watch candidates being interviewed over dinner. The interviewer ordered wine; some candidates followed suit while others chose soda. Even though the candidates did not raise the glass to their lips, those with wine in front of them were judged less intelligent than those staring at a glass of Fanta.
Watching Don Draper in Mad Men raise something far stronger than wine to his lips doesn't make me doubt his intelligence; it makes me long for those heavy drinking days. This nostalgia is only slightly dented by my memory of what life was actually like in the 1980s on Fleet Street when journalists sloped off to the pub every lunch time. Unless my memory is playing tricks, the men then did not look like Don Draper. They had giant pot bellies, and they sometimes slurred their words in the afternoons.
In the world of Mad Men, judgment was warped by lust and alcohol. But in the puritanical, modern business world, judgment is warped by something more pernicious: fear of lust and fear of alcohol. Both worlds were bad, but the first surely had the edge on the second: at least it was intermittently enjoyable.
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