Bartleby
Tough breaks
Unused holidays are a problem for employers and employees alike
THE YEAR 2020 put worker morale to the test. It did not help that many employees were unable to enjoy a normal holiday, or had to change their plans. For Bartleby, two sun-drenched weeks in Spain were converted into a wet week in Cornwall, marked by an attempt to eat a pasty on the beach in the face of a sudden hailstorm. Finding a restaurant was virtually impossible because of the high demand created by the British government’s “eat out to help out” scheme.
alike
这是一个小副词，意思是“” 两者都一样；同样”
morale 表示“士气”sun-drenched 意思是“阳光充足；阳光充足”；drench 本意是“使湿透”pasty指“馅饼”
hailstorm 指“冰雹暴”；hail 作名词意为“冰雹”virtually 指“几乎；差不多”Like many people, Bartleby is left with unused annual leave. But he is lucky that The Economist is a benign employer, willing to let him carry over a couple of weeks. Not every company can afford to be so kind. The occasional loss of a business columnist is not much of a handicap. Things are rather different when the employee is the client manager for the firm’s largest customer or the production manager at a microprocessor plant.
benign
意思是“善良；善良”
carry over sth. 是动词短语，表示“延迟”；延迟”columnist 指“专栏作家”，column表示“(报刊)栏目，栏目”
handicap 意思是“障碍”；障碍”类似 obstacleThe more vital the worker, the more likely they will have been to be asked to postpone their annual leave in the pandemic. This may leave employers with headaches in the coming year as workers catch up before their unused holiday is lost. Brian Kropp of Gartner, a consultancy, expects to see the lion’s share of staff shortages to land in the first half of 2021.
postpone 意思是“ 延迟；延迟”相当于 put offcatch up
是一个短语，意思是“赶上，达到(某个水平)”
the lions share （of sth.）是一种搭配，意思是“最大(或最好)一份”For multinational firms, the different rules and customs that apply across the world further complicate things. America lacks federal laws that guarantee workers vacation time; rules are down to individual states. Even when Americans do get a holiday allowance, 55% of them do not use all of it, according to a survey from 2018. In Japan only 52% of workers took all their paid leave that year.
lack 作为物动词，意思是“没有；缺乏”；lacking 是形容词，用作 be lacking in sth. 表示“缺乏……”
